Frontispiece: Borges lecturing at Harvard University, 1967. Photo by Christopher S. Johnson; courtesy of Harvard Magazine. 卷首插图：1967 年博尔赫斯在哈佛大学演讲。照片由克里斯托弗·S·约翰逊拍摄；承蒙《哈佛杂志》提供。
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986 美国国会图书馆编目数据 豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯, 1899-1986
This craft of verse / Jorge Luis Borges; edited by Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu. 诗艺 / 豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯; 卡林-安德烈·米哈伊列斯库编.
p. cm.-(The Charles Eliot Norton lectures; 1967-1968) ISBN 0-674-00290-3 (alk. paper) 页数 cm.-(查尔斯·艾略特·诺顿讲座系列; 1967-1968) ISBN 0-674-00290-3 (碱性纸)
Poetry-History and criticism. I. Mihăilescu, Călin-Andrei, 1956II. Title. III. Series. 诗歌-历史与批评. I. 米哈伊列斯库, 卡林-安德烈, 1956II. 题名. III. 丛书.
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00-03354I
CONTENTS 目录
1 The Riddle of Poetry … I 1 诗歌之谜……1
2 The Metaphor … 2I2 I 2 隐喻…… 2I2 I
3 The Telling of the Tale … 43 3 故事的讲述……43
4 Word-Music and Translation … 57 4 文字音乐与翻译……57
5 Thought and Poetry … 77 5 思想与诗歌……77
6 A Poet’s Creed … 97 6 诗人的信条……97
Notes … 125 注释……125
“Of This and That Versatile Craft” by Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu … 143 《论这门变化多端的技艺》卡林-安德烈·米哈伊列斯库 著……143
Index … ISI 索引……ISI
At the outset, I would like to give you fair warning of what to expect-or rather, of what not to ex-pect-from me. I find that I have made a slip in the very title of my first lecture. The title is, if we are not mistaken, “The Riddle of Poetry,” and the stress of course is on the first word, “riddle.” So you may think the riddle is all-important. Or, what might be still worse, you may think I have deluded myself into believing that I have somehow discovered the true reading of the riddle. The truth is that I have no revelations to offer. I have spent my life reading, analyzing, writing (or trying my hand at writing), and enjoying. I found the last to be the most important thing of all. “Drinking in” poetry, I have come to a 首先，我要坦诚地告知各位，你们能从我的讲座中期待什么——或者更准确地说，不该期待什么。我发现自己连第一讲的标题都犯了错。如果我没记错的话，这个标题是"诗歌之谜"，重点自然落在第一个词"谜"上。因此你们可能会认为这个谜题至关重要。或者更糟的是，你们或许以为我自欺欺人地相信，自己已经发现了破解这个谜题的真谛。事实上，我并没有什么天启般的见解可以分享。我的一生都在阅读、分析、写作（或者说尝试写作）和享受诗歌。我发现最后这件事才是一切中最重要的。在"畅饮"诗歌的过程中，我逐渐得出了
final conclusion about it. Indeed, every time I am faced with a blank page, I feel that I have to rediscover literature for myself. But the past is of no avail whatever to me. So, as I have said, I have only my perplexities to offer you. I am nearing seventy. I have given the major part of my life to literature, and I can offer you only doubts. 关于诗歌的最终结论。事实上，每当我面对一张白纸时，都感觉自己必须重新发现文学。但过往的经验对我毫无助益。正如我所说，我能带给你们的只有困惑。我已年近七十，将人生大部分时光献给了文学，而我能给予你们的却只有疑问。
The great English writer and dreamer Thomas De Quincey wrote-in some of the thousands of pages of his fourteen volumes-that to discover a new problem was quite as important as discovering the solution to an old one. But I cannot even offer you that; I can offer you only time-honored perplexities. And yet, why need I worry about this? What is a history of philosophy, but a history of the perplexities of the Hindus, of the Chinese, of the Greeks, of the Schoolmen, of Bishop Berkeley, of Hume, of Schopenhauer, and so on? I merely wish to share those perplexities with you. 伟大的英国作家兼梦想家托马斯·德·昆西曾在其十四卷本著作的数千页文字中写道——发现新问题与解决旧问题同等重要。但我甚至无法向你们提供新发现；我只能呈现那些历经时间考验的困惑。然而，我又何必为此忧虑？哲学史不正是印度人、中国人、希腊人、经院学者、贝克莱主教、休谟、叔本华等人困惑思想的历史吗？我只愿与诸位分享这些困惑。
Whenever I have dipped into books of aesthetics, I have had an uncomfortable feeling that I was reading the works of astronomers who never looked at the stars. I mean that they were writing about poetry as if poetry were a task, and not what it really is: a passion and a joy. For example, I have read with great respect Benedetto Croce’s book on aesthetics, and I have been 每当我翻阅美学著作时，总有种不适感，仿佛在读那些从未仰望过星空的天文学家的作品。我的意思是，他们谈论诗歌的方式，就像在讨论一项任务，而非诗歌的本质——一种激情与欢愉。比如，我曾怀着极大敬意拜读克罗齐的美学专著，却始终...
handed the definition that poetry and language are an “expression.” Now, if we think of an expression of something, then we land back at the old problem of form and matter; and if we think about the expression of nothing in particular, that gives us really nothing. So we respectfully receive that definition, and then we go on to something else. We go on to poetry; we go on to life. And life is, I am sure, made of poetry. Poetry is not alien-poetry is, as we shall see, lurking round the corner. It may spring on us at any moment. 有人提出诗歌与语言是"表达"的定义。此刻，若我们将之理解为对某物的表达，便会重新陷入形式与内容的古老命题；若理解为无特定对象的表达，则这定义本身便毫无意义。于是我们恭敬地接纳这个定义，继而转向其他事物。我们转向诗歌；我们转向生活。而生活，我确信，是由诗歌构成的。诗歌并非异质的存在——正如我们将要看到的，它始终潜伏在转角处。随时可能向我们突然显现。
Now, we are apt to fall into a common confusion. We think, for example, that if we study Homer, or the Divine Comedy, or Fray Luis de León, or Macbeth, we are studying poetry. But books are only occasions for poetry. 我们常会陷入一种普遍的困惑。例如，我们以为研读荷马史诗、《神曲》、路易斯·德·莱昂修士或《麦克白》，就是在研读诗歌。但书籍不过是诗歌的载体。
I think Emerson wrote somewhere that a library is a kind of magic cavern which is full of dead men. And those dead men can be reborn, can be brought to life when you open their pages. 记得爱默生曾在某处写道：图书馆犹如充满亡者的魔法洞窟。当你翻开书页，那些逝者便能重生，重获生命。
Speaking about Bishop Berkeley (who, may I remind you, was a prophet of the greatness of America), I remember he wrote that the taste of the apple is neither in the apple itself-the apple cannot taste it-self-nor in the mouth of the eater. It requires a contact between them. The same thing happens to a 谈及贝克莱主教（容我提醒，他是预言美国伟大的先知），我记得他写过：苹果的滋味既不在苹果本身——苹果无法品尝自己——也不在品尝者的口中。这需要两者间的接触。同样的情况也发生在
book or to a collection of books, to a library. For what is a book in itself? A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words-or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols-spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word. 一本书或一批藏书、一座图书馆上。书籍本身是什么？它只是物质世界中的一件物品，是一堆无生命的符号。直到合适的读者出现，那些文字——更准确说是文字背后的诗意，因为文字本身仅是符号——才焕发生机，于是我们见证了文字的复活。
I am reminded now of a poem you all know by heart; but you will never have noticed, perhaps, how strange it is. For perfect things in poetry do not seem strange; they seem inevitable. And so we hardly thank the writer for his pains. I am thinking of a sonnet written more than a hundred years ago by a young man in London (in Hampstead, I think), a young man who died of lung disease, John Keats, and of his famous and perhaps hackneyed sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” What is strange about that poem-and I thought of this only three or four days ago, when I was pondering this lecture-is the fact that it is a poem written about the poetic experience itself. You know it by heart, yet I would like you to hear once more the surge and thunder of its final lines, 此刻我想起一首诸位都烂熟于心的诗篇；但你们或许从未注意到它有多么奇特。因为诗歌中的完美之作从不显得怪异，它们仿佛理所当然。因此我们很少感激诗人的苦心。我想到的是一百多年前伦敦汉普斯特德（我想是那里）一位死于肺病的年轻人——约翰·济慈——所写的十四行诗，那首或许已被引用得陈腐的《初读查普曼译荷马史诗有感》。这首诗的奇特之处（就在三四天前构思这次演讲时我才想到）在于：它本身就是一首关于诗歌体验的诗。你们对它倒背如流，但我仍想请诸位再次聆听其末行奔涌的惊雷：
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 那时我感觉像守望天际的人
When a new planet swims into his ken; 当一颗新行星游入他的视野；
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 或如目光如炬的科尔特斯
He stared at the Pacific-and all his men look’d at each other with a wild surmiseSilent, upon a peak in Darien. 他凝视着太平洋——而他的所有船员面面相觑，带着狂野的猜测，沉默地站在达连湾的山巅。
Here we have the poetic experience itself. We have George Chapman, the friend and rival of Shakespeare, being dead and suddenly coming to life when John Keats read his Iliad or his Odyssey. I think it was of George Chapman (but I cannot be sure, as I am not a Shakespearean scholar) that Shakespeare was thinking when he wrote: “Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, / Bound for the prize of all too precious you?” ^(1){ }^{1} 此刻我们正经历着诗性体验本身。莎士比亚的挚友兼对手乔治·查普曼已然逝去，却在济慈阅读其《伊利亚特》或《奥德赛》译本时骤然复活。我想当莎士比亚写下"是否他伟大诗篇骄傲的满帆，/正驶向你这无价珍宝的彼岸？"时，心中所思正是乔治·查普曼（不过我不敢确定，毕竟我不是莎学专家）。
There is a word that seems to me very important: “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” This “first” may, I think, prove most helpful to us. At the very moment I was going over those mighty lines of Keats’s, I was thinking that perhaps I was only being loyal to my memory. Perhaps the real thrill I got out of the verses by Keats lay in that distant moment of my childhood in Buenos Aires when I first heard my father reading them aloud. And when the fact that poetry, language, was not only a medium for communication but could also be a passion and a joy-when this was revealed to me, I do not think I understood the words, but I felt that something was happening to me. It was 有一个词在我看来意义非凡："初读查普曼译荷马"。这个"初"字，或许能给我们极大启发。当我重温济慈那些雄浑诗行时，突然意识到：或许我只是在忠于自己的记忆。当年在布宜诺斯艾利斯的童年时光里，父亲第一次为我高声朗诵这些诗句时产生的震颤，才是济慈诗行真正打动我的根源。当诗歌——当语言——不仅作为交流媒介，更能成为激情与欢愉之源的这个事实，在我面前揭晓时，我想我并未理解那些词语，却真切感受到某种变化正在发生。这种变化
THE RIDDLE OF POETRY 诗之谜
happening not to my mere intelligence but to my whole being, to my flesh and blood. 并非作用于单纯的智力，而是席卷我的整个存在，渗透我的血肉之躯。
Going back to the words “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” I wonder if John Keats felt that thrill after he had gone through the many books of the Iliad and the Odyssey. I think the first reading of a poem is a true one, and after that we delude ourselves into the belief that the sensation, the impression, is repeated. But, as I say, it may be mere loyalty, a mere trick of the memory, a mere confusion between our passion and the passion we once felt. Thus, it might be said that poetry is a new experience every time. Every time I read a poem, the experience happens to occur. And that is poetry. 回望济慈《初读查普曼译荷马有感》的诗句，我不禁揣测：当他通读完《伊利亚特》与《奥德赛》的浩瀚篇章后，是否仍能感受到那种战栗？我认为诗歌的初读体验最为真实，而后我们便自欺欺人地相信那种震颤与感动会重现。但正如我所说，这或许只是出于忠诚，只是记忆的把戏，只是将当下的激情与往昔感受混为一谈。因此可以说，诗歌每次都是崭新的体验。每当我读诗时，这种体验便恰逢其时地降临——这，就是诗的真谛。
I read once that the American painter Whistler was in a café in Paris, and people were discussing the way in which heredity, the environment, the political state of the times, and so on influence the artist. And then Whistler said, “Art happens.” That is to say, there is something mysterious about art. I would like to take his words in a new sense. I shall say: Art happens every time we read a poem. Now, this may seem to clear away the time-honored notion of the classics, the idea of everlasting books, of books where one may always find beauty. But I hope I am mistaken here. 我曾读到美国画家惠斯勒在巴黎咖啡馆的轶事：当人们讨论遗传、环境、时代政治等因素对艺术家的影响时，他突然插话："艺术是偶然发生的。"这暗示着艺术具有某种神秘性。我想赋予这句话新的诠释：每当我们读诗时，艺术便即时发生。这个观点或许会消解经典著作"永恒之美"的传统认知，但我希望这只是我的误解。
Perhaps I may give a brief survey of the history of books. So far as I can remember, the Greeks had no great use for books. It is a fact, indeed, that most of the great teachers of mankind have been not writers but speakers. Think of Pythagoras, Christ, Socrates, the Buddha, and so on. And since I have spoken of Socrates, I would like to say something about Plato. I remember Bernard Shaw said that Plato was the dramatist who invented Socrates, even as the four evangelists were the dramatists who invented Jesus. This may be going too far, but there is a certain truth in it. In one of the dialogues of Plato, he speaks about books in a rather disparaging way: “What is a book? A book seems, like a picture, to be a living being; and yet if we ask it something, it does not answer. Then we see that it is dead.” ^(2){ }^{2} In order to make the book into a living thing, he invented-happily for us-the Platonic dialogue, which forestalls the reader’s doubts and questions. 或许我可以简要回顾一下书籍的历史。就我所知，希腊人最初并不太重视书籍。事实上，人类大多数伟大导师都不是著书立说者，而是口传心授之人——想想毕达哥拉斯、基督、苏格拉底、佛陀等人便知。既然提到苏格拉底，我想谈谈柏拉图。记得萧伯纳曾说，柏拉图是创造苏格拉底这个角色的剧作家，正如四位福音书作者是塑造耶稣形象的剧作家。此言或许过甚，但确有几分道理。在柏拉图某篇对话录中，他对书籍的评价颇为轻蔑："书为何物？书看似图画，仿佛具有生命；然当我们向它提问时，它却缄默不语。这时我们才明白，它原是死物。" ^(2){ }^{2} 为了让书籍获得生命，他为我们创造了美妙的柏拉图式对话体——这种文体预先回应了读者的疑惑与诘问。
But we might say also that Plato was wistful about Socrates. After Socrates’ death, he would say to himself, “Now, what would Socrates have said about this particular doubt of mine?” And then, in order to hear once again the voice of the master he loved, he wrote the dialogues. In some of these dialogues, Socrates 但我们或许也可以说，柏拉图对苏格拉底怀着深切的怀念。在苏格拉底离世后，他常自问："若老师尚在，会如何解答我此刻的困惑？"为了再次聆听所敬爱导师的声音，他提笔写下了这些对话录。在某些篇章中，苏格拉底
stands for the truth. In others, Plato has dramatized his many moods. And some of those dialogues come to no conclusion whatever, because Plato was thinking as he wrote them; he did not know the last page when he wrote the first. He was letting his mind wander, and he was dramatizing that mind into many people. I suppose his chief aim was the illusion that, despite the fact that Socrates had drunk the hemlock, Socrates was still with him. I feel this to be true because I have had many masters in my life. I am proud to be a disci-ple-a good disciple, I hope. And when I think of my father, when I think of the great Jewish-Spanish author Rafael Cansinos-Asséns, ^(3){ }^{3} when I think of Macedonio Fernández, ^(4){ }^{4} I would also like to hear their voices. And sometimes I train my voice into a trick of imitating their voices, in order that I may think as they would have thought. They are always around me. 代表着真理。在其他对话录中，柏拉图则戏剧化地展现了他多变的思绪。有些对话甚至根本未得出结论，因为柏拉图在书写时仍在思考；他写下第一页时并不知晓最后一页的内容。他任由思想漫游，并将这些思绪戏剧化为众多人物。我想他主要追求的是这样一种幻象：尽管苏格拉底已饮下毒堇汁，他仍与苏格拉底同在。我深有感触，因我此生受教于诸多导师。我以身为门徒为荣——但愿是位好门徒。当我思念父亲时，当我追忆伟大的犹太-西班牙作家拉斐尔·坎西诺斯-阿森斯时，当我怀念马塞多尼奥·费尔南德斯时，我总渴望能再聆听他们的声音。有时我会刻意模仿他们的声线，只为能像他们那样思考。他们始终环绕在我身旁。
There is another sentence, in one of the Fathers of the Church. He said that it was as dangerous to put a book into the hands of an ignorant man as to put a sword into the hands of children. So books, to the ancients, were mere makeshifts. In one of his many letters, Seneca wrote against large libraries; and long afterwards, Schopenhauer wrote that many people mistook the buying of a book for the buying of the 教会的一位教父曾说过另一句话：把书交到无知者手中，如同把剑交到孩童手里一样危险。因此对古人而言，书籍不过是权宜之计。塞内加在其众多书信中曾反对建立大型图书馆；许久之后，叔本华也写道，许多人错把购书当作了购得真理。
contents of the book. Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies-for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry-I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.” 家中的藏书时常让我感到，恐怕此生都难以尽读，然而购置新书的诱惑依然难以抗拒。每当我走进书店，发现一本关于个人爱好的书籍——比如古英语或古诺尔斯语诗歌——总会暗自感叹："可惜不能再买这本了，家中已有收藏。"
After the ancients, from the East there came a different idea of the book. There came the idea of Holy Writ, of books written by the Holy Ghost; there came Korans, Bibles, and so on. Following the example of Spengler in his Untergang des Abendlandes-The Decline of the West-I would like to take the Koran as an example. If I am not mistaken, Muslim theologians think of it as being prior to the creation of the word. The Koran is written in Arabic, yet Muslims think of it as being prior to the language. Indeed, I have read that they think of the Koran not as a work of God but as an attribute of God, even as His justice, His mercy, and His whole wisdom are. 古人之后，东方带来了另一种书籍观念：圣典的概念，即由圣灵书写的经文；于是有了《古兰经》《圣经》等典籍。效仿斯宾格勒在《西方的没落》中的做法，我想以《古兰经》为例。若未记错，穆斯林神学家认为它先于文字而存在。《古兰经》虽以阿拉伯语写成，但信徒们认为它先于语言本身。事实上，我曾读到他们不将《古兰经》视为真主的作品，而是真主的属性——如同祂的公义、仁慈与全部智慧那般。
And thus there came into Europe the idea of Holy Writ-an idea that is, I think, not wholly mistaken. Bernard Shaw (to whom I am always going back) was asked once whether he really thought the Bible was 于是，"圣典"这一概念便传入了欧洲——我认为这一概念并非全然错误。萧伯纳（我总是不断回溯到他）曾被问及是否真认为圣经是
the work of the Holy Ghost. And he said, “I think the Holy Ghost has written not only the Bible, but all books.” This is rather hard on the Holy Ghost, of course-but all books are worth reading, I suppose. This, I think, is what Homer meant when he spoke to the muse. And this is what the Hebrews and what Milton meant when they talked of the Holy Ghost whose temple is the upright and pure heart of men. And in our less beautiful mythology, we speak of the “subliminal self,” of the “subconscious.” Of course, these words are rather uncouth when we compare them to the muses or to the Holy Ghost. Still, we have to put up with the mythology of our time. For the words mean essentially the same thing. 圣灵的杰作。他答道："我认为圣灵不仅创作了圣经，还创作了所有书籍。"这说法对圣灵而言固然有些苛刻——但我想，所有书籍都值得一读。这正是荷马向缪斯女神倾诉时的本意，也是希伯来人与弥尔顿谈及"圣灵居所乃人类正直纯洁之心"时的真谛。在我们不那么优美的神话体系中，我们称之为"潜意识自我"或"下意识"。当然，这些词汇比起缪斯或圣灵显得颇为粗陋。但我们不得不接受属于这个时代的神话表述——因为它们的本质内涵并无二致。
We come now to the notion of the “classics.” I must confess that I think a book is really not an immortal object to be picked up and duly worshiped, but rather an occasion for beauty. And it has to be so, for language is shifting all the time. I am very fond of etymologies and would like to recall to you (for I am sure you know much more about these things than I do) some rather curious etymologies. 现在我们谈谈"经典"这个概念。我必须承认，我认为一本书并非供人拾起并虔诚膜拜的不朽之物，而应是美的契机。它必须如此，因为语言始终在变迁。我酷爱词源学，想与诸位分享（相信你们对此的了解远胜于我）一些颇为奇特的词源演变。
For example, we have in English the verb “to tease”-a mischievous word. It means a kind of joke. Yet in Old English tesan meant “to wound with a 例如英语中的动词"to tease"——一个顽皮的词汇，意为某种玩笑。然而在古英语中，"tesan"原指"用剑刺伤"，正如法语"navrer"意为"用剑刺穿某人"。再以另一个古英语词"preat"为例，从《贝奥武甫》开篇诗句可知其本义是"愤怒的人群"——即"威胁"的源头。诸如此类的例子不胜枚举。
sword,” even as in French navrer meant “to thrust a sword through somebody.” Then, to take a different Old English word, preat, you may find out from the very first verses of Beowulf that it meant “an angry crowd”-that is to say, the cause of the “threat.” And thus we might go on endlessly. 剑"——正如法语中的"navrer"意为"用剑刺穿某人"。再举一个不同的古英语词"preat"，你可能会从《贝奥武甫》的最初几行诗句中发现，它的意思是"愤怒的人群"——也就是说，"威胁"的起因。如此这般，我们可以无穷无尽地列举下去。
But now let us consider some particular verses. I take my examples from English, since I have a particular love for English literature-though my knowledge of it is, of course, limited. There are cases where poetry creates itself. For example, I don’t think the words “quietus” and “bodkin” are especially beautiful; indeed, I would say they are rather uncouth. But if we think of “When he himself might his quietus make / With a bare bodkin,” we are reminded of the great speech by Hamlet. ^(5){ }^{5} And thus the context creates poetry for those words-words that no one would ever dare to use nowadays, because they would be mere quotations. 不过现在让我们来细读一些具体的诗句。我选择英文诗为例，因为我对英国文学怀有特殊的热爱——尽管我的了解自然有限。有些时候，诗歌会自我成就。比如"quietus"（解脱）和"bodkin"（匕首）这两个词本身并不优美，甚至可以说相当粗粝。但当读到"当他可以用一柄光秃的匕首/了结自己的解脱"时，我们立刻会想起哈姆雷特那段著名的独白。 ^(5){ }^{5} 正是语境为这些词汇赋予了诗意——这些如今无人敢用的词，若脱离上下文就只是生硬的引用了。
Then there are other examples, and perhaps simpler ones. Let us take the title of one of the most famous books in the world, Historia del ingenioso bidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. The word bidalgo has today a peculiar dignity all its own, yet when Cervantes wrote it, the word bidalgo meant “a country 还有更简单的例子。以世界名著《奇情异想的绅士堂吉诃德·德·拉曼恰》（Historia del ingenioso bidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha）的书名为例。"bidalgo"（乡绅）这个词如今自带庄严感，但在塞万提斯写作的年代，它不过是指"乡下
gentleman.” As for the name “Quixote,” it was meant to be a rather ridiculous word, like the names of many of the characters in Dickens: Pickwick, Swiveller, Chuzzlewit, Twist, Squears, Quilp, and so on. And then you have “de la Mancha,” which now sounds noble in Castilian to us, but when Cervantes wrote it down, he intended it to sound perhaps (I ask the apology of any resident of that city who may be here) as if he had written “Don Quixote of Kansas City.” You see how those words have changed, how they have been ennobled. You see a strange fact: that because the old soldier Miguel de Cervantes poked mild fun at La Mancha, now “La Mancha” is one of the everlasting words of literature. 绅士。”至于“吉诃德”这个名字，本意是个相当滑稽的词，就像狄更斯笔下许多人物的名字：匹克威克、斯威夫勒、丘兹尔维特、特威斯特、斯奎尔斯、奎尔普等等。然后是“德·拉·曼查”，如今在我们听来这卡斯蒂利亚语显得高贵，但当塞万提斯写下它时，或许意在让它听起来（我向在座可能来自该城的居民致歉）像是写了“堪萨斯城的唐·吉诃德”。你看这些词语如何变迁，如何被赋予了高贵。你会发现一个奇特现象：正因为老战士米格尔·德·塞万提斯对拉曼查略带善意的调侃，如今“拉曼查”已成为文学中永恒的词句之一。
Let us take another example of verses that have changed. I am thinking of a sonnet by Rossetti, a sonnet that labors under the not-too-beautiful name “Inclusiveness.” The sonnet begins thus: 让我们再看一个诗句演变的例子。我想起罗塞蒂的一首十四行诗，这首诗背负着不太雅致的标题《包容》。诗的开头这样写道：
What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep to brood, How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes, Of what her kiss was, when his father wooed? ^(6){ }^{6} 何人曾俯身凝视儿子的睡颜，思量那张脸将如何注视自己冰冷的遗容？或如母亲亲吻他眼眸时，他父亲求爱时那吻又是何种滋味？
I think that these lines are perhaps more vivid now than when they were written, some eighty years ago, 我认为这些诗句现在读来，或许比八十年前刚创作时更为鲜活。
because the cinema has taught us to follow quick sequences of visual images. In the first line, “What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep to brood,” we have the father bending over the face of the sleeping son. And then in the second line, as in a good film, we have the same image reversed: we see the son bending over the face of that dead man, his father. And perhaps our recent study of psychology has made us more sensitive to these lines: “Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes, / Of what her kiss was, when his father wooed.” Here we have, of course, the beauty of the soft English vowels in “brood,” “wooed.” And the additional beauty of “wooed” being by itself-not “wooed her” but simply “wooed.” The word goes on ringing. 因为电影教会我们追随快速切换的视觉画面。首句"何人俯身凝视幼子睡颜沉思"中，我们看到父亲俯身端详熟睡的儿子。紧接着第二行，如同优秀电影的转场手法，这个画面被反转呈现：儿子正俯身凝视亡父的面容。或许我们近期对心理学的研究，让我们更能体悟这些诗句："当生母亲吻他眼帘时/他想起父亲求爱时她的吻"。这里自然蕴含着"brood"与"wooed"中柔软英语元音之美。而"wooed"独立存在的形式更添韵味——不是"wooed her"，仅用"wooed"一词，余音袅袅不绝。
There is also a different kind of beauty. Let us take an adjective that once was commonplace. I have no Greek, but I think that the Greek is oinopa pontos, and the common English rendering is “the wine-dark sea.” I suppose the word “dark” is slipped in to make things easier for the reader. Perhaps it would be “the winy sea,” or something of the kind. I am sure that when Homer (or the many Greeks who recorded Homer) wrote it, they were simply thinking of the sea; the adjective was straightforward. But nowadays, if I or if any of you, after trying many fancy adjectives, 还存在另一种美。让我们以一个曾经寻常的形容词为例。我不懂希腊文，但我想希腊原文应是"oinopa pontos"，通常英译为"the wine-dark sea（酒色幽暗的海）"。我猜加入"dark"这个字是为了让读者更容易理解。或许本可译为"如酒的海"或类似表达。我确信当荷马（或那些记录荷马史诗的希腊人）写下这个词时，他们只是单纯地想着大海；这个形容词直白无华。但如今，若我或在座诸位在尝试过诸多花哨形容词后，
write in a poem “the wine-dark sea,” this is not a mere repetition of what the Greeks wrote. Rather, it is a going back to tradition. When we speak of “the wine-dark sea,” we think of Homer and of the thirty centuries that lie between us and him. So that although the words may be much the same, when we write “the wine-dark sea” we are really writing something quite different from what Homer was writing. 在诗中写下"酒色幽暗的海"，这并非简单重复希腊人的文字，而是向传统的回归。当我们说出"酒色幽暗的海"时，想到的是荷马，以及横亘在我们与他之间的三十个世纪。因此尽管用词或许极为相似，但当我们写下"酒色幽暗的海"时，实际写就的与荷马当年所写的已截然不同。
Thus, the language is shifting; the Latins knew all about that. And the reader is shifting also. This brings us back to the old metaphor of the Greeks-the metaphor, or rather the truth, about no man stepping twice into the same river. ^(7){ }^{7} And there is, I think, an element of fear here. At first we are apt to think of the river as flowing. We think, “Of course, the river goes on but the water is changing.” Then, with an emerging sense of awe, we feel that we too are changing-that we are as shifting and evanescent as the river is. 因此，语言在不断变迁——古罗马人对此深有体会。而读者也在不断变化。这让我们想起古希腊人的古老隐喻，或者说真理：人不能两次踏入同一条河流。 ^(7){ }^{7} 我想这其中还暗含着某种恐惧。起初我们总以为流动的只是河水。我们会想："河流当然亘古长存，只是水在更替。"而后，随着敬畏之心的萌生，我们意识到变化的其实是我们自己——我们如同河流般流转易逝。
However, we need not worry too much about the fate of the classics, because beauty is always with us. Here I would like to quote another verse, by Browning, perhaps a now-forgotten poet. He says: 不过我们无需过分担忧经典的命运，因为美始终与我们同在。在此我想引用另一位诗人勃朗宁的诗句，这位诗人或许已被今人遗忘。他写道：
Just when we’re safest, there’s a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one’s death, A chorus-ending from Euripides. ^(8){ }^{8} 正当我们最安稳时，一抹晚霞的轻触，/一朵花铃的遐思，某个人的离世，/或欧里庇得斯剧中合唱的终章。 ^(8){ }^{8}
Yet the first line is enough: “Just when we’re safest . . .” That is to say, beauty is lurking all about us. It may come to us in the name of a film; it may come to us in some popular lyric; we may even find it in the pages of a great or famous writer. 其实仅需首句便已足够："正当我们最安稳时......"这意味着美始终潜伏在我们周围。它可能以一部电影的名义降临，可能藏身于某段流行歌词，我们甚至会在某位伟大或著名作家的书页间与它邂逅。
And since I have spoken of a dead master of mine, Rafael Cansinos-Asséns (maybe this is the second time you’ve heard his name; I don’t quite know why he is forgotten), ^(9){ }^{9} I remember that Cansinos-Asséns wrote a very fine prose poem wherein he asked God to defend him, to save him from beauty, because, he says, “there is too much beauty in the world.” He thought that beauty was overwhelming it. Although I do not know if I have been a particularly happy man (I hope I am going to be happy at the ripe age of sixty-seven), I still think that beauty is all around us. 既然我提到了我已故的导师拉斐尔·坎西诺斯-阿森斯（这或许是你们第二次听到他的名字，我不太明白为何他会被世人遗忘）， ^(9){ }^{9} 我不禁想起他写过一首极美的散文诗。诗中他向神明祈求庇护，恳求解脱于美的桎梏，因为"这世间的美实在太过丰盈"。他认为美已形成一种压迫。尽管我不确定自己是否算得上特别幸福之人（但愿能在六十七岁的迟暮之年获得幸福），但我始终坚信美无处不在。
As to whether a poem has been written by a great poet or not, this is important only to historians of literature. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that I have written a beautiful line; let us take this as a working hypothesis. Once I have written it, that line does me no good, because, as I’ve already said, that line came to me from the Holy Ghost, from the subliminal self, or perhaps from some other writer. I often find I am merely quoting something I read some 至于某首诗是否出自大诗人之手，这不过是文学史家需要考究的问题。为便于讨论，假设我写出了一句绝妙的诗行——权且将此作为论证前提。但诗句一旦诞生，便与我再无瓜葛，因为正如前文所言，这诗句来自圣灵的启示，源于潜意识的馈赠，抑或是其他作家的手笔。我常发觉自己不过是在复述多年前读过的文字，而这恰似一场重新发现。或许诗人本就该隐去姓名。
time ago, and then that becomes a rediscovering. Perhaps it is better that a poet should be nameless. 时光流转后的重新邂逅。或许诗人本就该隐去姓名。
I spoke of “the wine-dark sea,” and since my hobby is Old English (I am afraid that, if you have the courage or the patience to come back to some of my lectures, you may have more Old English inflicted on you), I would like to recall some lines that I think beautiful. I will say them first in English, and then in the stark and voweled Old English of the ninth century. 我提到了"酒色深沉的大海"，由于我的爱好是古英语（恐怕如果你们有勇气或耐心再来听我几次讲座，可能还会被迫接受更多古英语内容），我想回忆几句我认为很美的诗句。我会先用现代英语朗诵，再用九世纪那种元音饱满的古英语朗诵。
It snowed from the north; rime bound the fields; hail fell on earth, the coldest of seeds. 雪自北方飘落；寒霜封锁田野；冰雹坠向大地，最寒冷的种子。
Norban sniwde hrim hrusan bond hægl feol on eorban corna caldast. ^(10)^{10}
This takes us back to what I said about Homer: when the poet wrote these lines, he was merely recording things that had happened. This was of course very strange in the ninth century, when people thought in terms of mythology, allegorical images, and so on. He 这让我们回想起我之前关于荷马的论述：当诗人写下这些诗句时，他只是在记录已经发生的事情。这在九世纪当然非常奇特，当时人们还习惯于用神话、寓言意象等方式思考。他
was merely telling very commonplace things. But nowadays when we read 当时我讲述的不过是些寻常事物。但如今当我们读到
It snowed from the north; rime bound the fields; hail fell on earth, the coldest of seeds . . . 北风卷雪至，寒霜覆原野，冰雹落尘壤，极寒凝籽实……
there is an added poetry. There is the poetry of a nameless Saxon having written those lines by the shores of the North Sea-in Northumberland, I think; and of those lines coming to us so straightforward, so plain, and so pathetic through the centuries. So we have both cases: the case (I need hardly dwell upon it) when time debases a poem, when the words lose their beauty; and also the case when time enriches rather than debases a poem. 这其中另有一重诗意。那是一位无名的撒克逊人在北海之滨——我想是在诺森伯兰——写下这些诗句的诗意；历经数百年岁月，这些诗句依然如此直白、如此质朴、如此哀婉地抵达我们。于是我们看到了两种情形：一种是时间贬损诗歌的案例（这点无需赘述），字句失去了它们的美；另一种则是时间非但未加贬损，反而令诗歌更显丰盈的案例。
I talked at the beginning about definitions. To end up, I would like to say that we make a very common mistake when we think that we’re ignorant of something because we are unable to define it. If we are in a Chestertonian mood (one of the very best moods to be in, I think), we might say that we can define something only when we know nothing about it. 开篇时我曾谈及定义。最后我想说，当我们因无法定义某物就认定自己对其无知时，实则犯了个常见谬误。若我们怀着切斯特顿式的心境（我以为这是最佳心境之一），或许会说：唯有对某物一无所知时，我们才能定义它。
For example, if I have to define poetry, and if I feel rather shaky about it, if I’m not too sure about it, I say 例如，若要我定义诗歌，而我对此感到踌躇不定、难以确信时，我会说
something like: “Poetry is the expression of the beautiful through the medium of words artfully woven together.” This definition may be good enough for a dictionary or for a textbook, but we all feel that it is rather feeble. There is something far more impor-tant-something that may encourage us to go on not only trying our hand at writing poetry, but enjoying it and feeling that we know all about it. 类似这样的定义：“诗歌是通过巧妙编织的文字媒介来表达美。”这或许足以满足词典或教科书的需求，但我们都能感觉到它相当苍白无力。诗歌蕴含着某种更为重要的东西——这种东西不仅能激励我们继续尝试创作诗歌，更能让我们享受诗歌并确信自己完全理解它。
This is that we know what poetry is. We know it so well that we cannot define it in other words, even as we cannot define the taste of coffee, the color red or yellow, or the meaning of anger, of love, of hatred, of the sunrise, of the sunset, or of our love for our country. These things are so deep in us that they can be expressed only by those common symbols that we share. So why should we need other words? 这是因为我们深知诗歌为何物。我们对诗歌的熟悉程度已无法用其他言语来界定，正如我们无法定义咖啡的滋味、红与黄的颜色，或是愤怒、爱恋、憎恨、日出、日落以及爱国之情的含义。这些感受深植于我们的生命之中，唯有通过人类共有的符号才能表达。既然如此，我们又何必另寻他词？
You may not agree with the examples I have chosen. Perhaps tomorrow I may think of better examples, may think I might have quoted other lines. But as you can pick and choose your own examples, it is not needful that you care greatly about Homer, or about the Anglo-Saxon poets, or about Rossetti. Because everyone knows where to find poetry. And when it comes, one feels the touch of poetry, that particular tingling of poetry. 或许你并不认同我所选的例证。明日我或许能想到更佳的诗句，或许会懊悔为何没有引用其他诗行。但既然诸位皆可自行择取例证，诸位便无需过分在意荷马、盎格鲁-撒克逊诗人或罗塞蒂——因为人人都知晓何处觅得诗篇。当诗意降临之时，人们自会感知到诗的触碰，那种独特的诗意震颤。
To end with, I have a quotation from Saint Augustine which comes in very fitly, I think. He said, “What is time? If people do not ask me what time is, I know. If they ask me what it is, then I do not know.” ^(11){ }^{11} I feel the same way about poetry. 最后，我想援引圣奥古斯丁的一段至为贴切的箴言作结。他曾言："时间为何物？若无人问我，我自知其意；若要我解释，我便茫然无所知。" ^(11){ }^{11} 我对诗歌的感受亦是如此。
One is hardly troubled about definitions. This time I am rather at sea, because I am no good at all at abstract thinking. But in the following lectures-if you are good enough to put up with me-we will take more concrete examples. I will speak about the metaphor, about word-music, about the possibility or impossibility of verse translation, and about the telling of a tale-that is to say, about epic poetry, the oldest and perhaps the bravest kind of poetry. And I will end with something that I can hardly divine now. I will end with a lecture called “The Poet’s Creed,” wherein I will try to justify my own life and the confidence some of you may have in me, despite this rather awkward and fumbling first lecture of mine. 人们很少为定义所困扰。这一次我却有些茫然，因为我实在不擅长抽象思维。但在接下来的讲座中——如果各位愿意包容我——我们将探讨更具体的例子。我会谈到隐喻，谈到文字的音乐性，谈到诗歌翻译的可能性与不可能性，还会谈到故事的讲述——也就是史诗，最古老也最富勇气的诗歌形式。最后我将以一个此刻还难以预知的话题作结，那场讲座名为"诗人的信条"，届时我将试图为自己的人生辩护，也为在座诸位可能给予我的信任辩护——尽管今天这第一讲如此笨拙而生涩。
As the subject of today’s talk is the metaphor, I shall begin with a metaphor. This first of the many metaphors I shall try to recall comes from the Far East, from China. If I am not mistaken, the Chinese call the world “the ten thousand things,” or-and this depends on the taste and fancy of the translator-“the ten thousand beings.” 既然今天要探讨的是隐喻，那么我就用一个隐喻来开场。在我将要回顾的众多隐喻中，这第一个来自遥远的东方，来自中国。如果我没记错的话，中国人把世界称作"万物"——或者根据译者的品味与想象，也可能译为"万有"。
We may accept, I suppose, the very conservative estimate of ten thousand. Surely there are more than ten thousand ants, ten thousand men, ten thousand hopes, fears, or nightmares in the world. But if we accept the number ten thousand, and if we think that all metaphors are made by linking two different things together, then, had we time enough, we might work 我想我们可以接受这个非常保守的估计——一万。世界上肯定不止一万只蚂蚁、一万个人、一万种希望、恐惧或噩梦。但如果我们接受"万"这个数字，并且认为所有隐喻都是通过将两个不同事物联系起来构成的，那么假以时日，我们或许能够
out an almost unbelievable sum of possible metaphors. I have forgotten my algebra, but I think that the sum should be ıo,ooo multiplied by 9,999, multiplied by 9,998 , and so on. Of course the sum of possible combinations is not endless, but it staggers the imagination. So we might be led to think: Why on earth should poets all over the world, and all through time, be using the same stock metaphors, when there are so many possible combinations? 几乎难以计数的隐喻组合。我已忘了代数公式，但我想总数应该是 10,000 乘以 9,999，再乘以 9,998，以此类推。当然可能的组合并非无穷无尽，但已足以震撼想象。于是我们不禁要问：为何古今中外的诗人，面对如此浩瀚的可能性，却始终沿用着相同的隐喻库存？
The Argentine poet Lugones, way back in the year 1909, wrote that he thought poets were always using the same metaphors, and that he would try his hand at discovering new metaphors for the moon. And in fact he concocted many hundreds of them. He also said, in the foreword to a book called Lunario sentimental, ^(1){ }^{1} that every word is a dead metaphor. This statement is, of course, a metaphor. Yet I think we all feel the difference between dead and living metaphors. If we take any good etymological dictionary (I am thinking of my old unknown friend Dr. Skeat) ^(2){ }^{2} and if we look up any word, we are sure to find a metaphor tucked away somewhere. 阿根廷诗人卢贡内斯早在 1909 年就写道，他认为诗人们总在重复相同的隐喻，并决心要为月亮发掘新喻。事实上他确实炮制了数百个月亮隐喻。在《感伤月历》序言中，他声称"每个词都是死去的隐喻"——这个论断本身当然也是个隐喻。但我们都能感受到死隐喻与活隐喻的区别。随便翻开一本优秀的词源词典（我想起那位素未谋面的老友斯基特博士），查阅任何词条，都必定能在某处发现藏匿的隐喻痕迹。
For example-and you can find this in the very first lines of Beowulf-the word preat meant “an angry mob,” but now the word is given to the effect and 例如——你可以在《贝奥武甫》的开篇几行中看到——"preat"一词原指"愤怒的暴民"，但如今这个词被赋予了效果与
not to the cause. Then we have the word “king.” “King” was originally cyning, which meant “a man who stands for the kin-for the people.” So, etymologically, “king,” “kinsman,” and “gentleman” are the same word. Yet if I say, “The king sat in his counting house, counting out his money,” we don’t think of the word “king” as being a metaphor. In fact, if we go in for abstract thinking, we have to forget that words were metaphors. We have to forget, for example, that in the word “consider” there is a suggestion of astrol-ogy-“consider” originally meaning “being with the stars,” “making a horoscope.” 而非原因。接着我们来看"king"这个词。"king"最初写作 cyning，意为"代表家族——代表人民的人"。因此，从词源学角度看，"king"（国王）、"kinsman"（族人）和"gentleman"（绅士）本是同源词。但当我念出"国王坐在账房里数钱"时，我们不会认为"king"是个隐喻。事实上，当我们进行抽象思考时，必须忘记词语曾是隐喻。比如我们必须忘记"consider"（考虑）这个词暗含占星意味——它原意是"与星辰同在"，"绘制星象图"。
What is important about the metaphor, I should say, is the fact of its being felt by the reader or the hearer as a metaphor. I will confine this talk to metaphors that are felt as metaphors by the reader. Not to such words as “king,” or “threat”-and we might go on, perhaps forever. 关于隐喻的重要性，我认为关键在于读者或听者能感受到它是一个隐喻。我将把讨论限定在那些被读者感知为隐喻的比喻上，而非诸如"国王"或"威胁"这类词语——我们或许可以一直列举下去。
First, I would like to take some stock patterns of metaphor. I use the word “pattern” because the metaphors I will quote will be to the imagination quite different, yet to the logical thinker they would be almost the same. So that we might speak of them as equations. Let us take the first that comes to my mind. Let us take the stock comparison, the time-honored com- 首先，我想列举几种常见的隐喻模式。我用"模式"这个词，是因为接下来要引用的隐喻在想象力层面差异显著，但对于逻辑思维者而言却近乎相同。因此我们可以将其视为等式。让我先想到的第一个例子，就是那个经典的、历史悠久的比喻——将眼睛比作星辰，或是反过来将星辰比作眼睛。
parison, of eyes and stars, or conversely of stars and eyes. The first example I remember comes from the Greek Anthology, ^(3){ }^{3} and I think Plato is supposed to have written it. The lines (I have no Greek) run more or less as follows: “I wish I were the night, so that I might watch your sleep with a thousand eyes.” Here, of course, what we feel is the tenderness of the lover; we feel his wish to be able to see his beloved from many points at once. We feel the tenderness behind these lines. 我记忆中的第一个例子来自《希腊诗选》，据说出自柏拉图之手。这几行诗（我不懂希腊文）大意如下："我愿化作黑夜，便能以千只眼眸守望你安眠。"在这里，我们自然能感受到恋人的柔情；体会到他渴望从无数角度同时凝视挚爱的心愿。字里行间流淌的温柔令人动容。
Now let us take another, less illustrious example: “The stars look down.” If we take logical thinking seriously, we have the same metaphor here. Yet the effect on our imagination is quite different. “The stars look down” does not make us think of tenderness; rather, it gives the idea of generations and generations of men toiling on and of the stars looking down with a kind of lofty indifference. 让我们来看另一个不那么著名的例子："群星俯视人间"。如果我们严格遵循逻辑思维，这里同样存在隐喻。然而它给想象力带来的效果却截然不同。"群星俯视人间"不会让我们联想到温柔，而是让人想到世世代代人类辛苦劳作，而群星以某种超然的冷漠俯视着这一切。
Let me take a different example-one of the stanzas that have most struck me. The lines come from a poem by Chesterton called “A Second Childhood”: 让我举一个不同的例子——这是最打动我的诗节之一。这些诗句出自切斯特顿的诗歌《第二童年》：
But I shall not grow too old to see enormous night arise, 但我不会老到看不见浩瀚黑夜升起，
A cloud that is larger than the world 那笼罩整个世界的巨大云翳
And a monster made of eyes. ^(4){ }^{4} 一只由眼睛构成的怪物。 ^(4){ }^{4}
Not a monster full of eyes (we know those monsters from the Revelation of Saint John) but-and this is far more awful-a monster made of eyes, as if those eyes were the living tissue of him. 不是一只布满眼睛的怪物（我们通过《圣约翰启示录》知晓这类怪物），而是——这要可怕得多——由眼睛组成的怪物，仿佛那些眼睛就是它活生生的血肉组织。
We have looked at three images which can all be traced back to the same pattern. But the point I would like to emphasize-and this is really one of the two important points in my talk-is that although the pattern is essentially the same, in the first case, the Greek example “I wish I were the night,” what the poet makes us feel is his tenderness, his anxiety; in the second, we feel a kind of divine indifference to things human; and in the third, the familiar night becomes a nightmare. 我们审视了三个意象，它们都可追溯至同一原型。但我想强调的重点——这确实是我演讲中两个重要论点之一——在于：尽管原型本质相同，第一个例子中希腊诗句"但愿我是黑夜"让我们感受到诗人的柔情与焦虑；第二个例子则让我们体会到对人间事物的神圣漠然；而第三个例子里，熟悉的黑夜化为了梦魇。
Let us now take a different pattern: let us take the idea of time flowing-flowing as a river does. The first example comes from a poem that Tennyson wrote when he was, I think, thirteen or fourteen. He destroyed it; but, happily for us, one line survived. I think you will find it in Tennyson’s biography written by Andrew Lang. ^(5){ }^{5} The line is: “Time flowing in the middle of the night.” I think Tennyson has chosen his time very wisely. In the night all things are silent, men are sleeping, yet time is flowing noiselessly on. This is one example. 现在让我们来看另一种模式：以河流般奔流不息的时间概念为例。第一个例子出自丁尼生十三四岁时写的一首诗（他后来销毁了这首诗，但幸运的是有一行诗句留存下来，你们可以在安德鲁·朗所写的丁尼生传记中找到）。这行诗写道："时间在午夜静静流淌"。我认为丁尼生对时机的选择极为精妙——万籁俱寂的深夜，人们酣睡之时，时间仍无声地奔流着。这是第一个例证。
There is also a novel (I’m sure you’re thinking of it) called simply Of Time and the River. ^(6){ }^{6} The mere putting together of the two words suggests the metaphor: time and the river, they both flow on. And then there is the famous sentence of the Greek philosopher: “No man steps twice into the same river.” ^(7){ }^{7} Here we have the beginning of terror, because at first we think of the river as flowing on, of the drops of water as being different. And then we are made to feel that we are the river, that we are as fugitive as the river. 还有一部小说（相信你们已想到）就命名为《时间与河流》。仅将这两个词并置就暗示了隐喻：时间与河流，二者皆奔流不息。接着是那位希腊哲学家的名言："人不能两次踏入同一条河流"。此时我们开始感到战栗，因为起初我们只想到河流奔流、水滴变幻，随后却意识到我们自己就是那条河，和河流一样转瞬即逝。
We also have those lines by Manrique: 我们还拥有曼里克的诗句：
Nuestras vidas son los ríos que van a dar en la mar qu’es el morir. 我们的生命是条条奔涌的河，终将汇入死亡之海。
Our lives are the rivers that flow into that sea which is death. ^(8){ }^{8} 我们的生命如同汇入死亡之海的河流。 ^(8){ }^{8}
This statement is not too impressive in English; I wish I could remember how Longfellow translated it in his “Coplas de Manrique.” ^(9){ }^{9} But of course (and we shall go into this question in another lecture) behind the stock metaphor we have the grave music of the words: 这句话在英语中并不十分出彩，但愿我能记起朗费罗在其《曼里克歌谣》中的译法。 ^(9){ }^{9} 但显然（我们将在另一场讲座中探讨这个问题），在这个陈旧的隐喻背后，蕴含着词语本身的庄严韵律：
Nuestras vidas son los ríos que van a dar en la mar
THE METAPHOR 隐喻
qu’es el morir; allí van los señoríos derechos a se acabar e consumir . . . 死亡为何物；权贵们终将走向消亡与湮灭……
Yet the metaphor is exactly the same in all these cases. 然而，这些例子中的隐喻手法如出一辙。
And now we will go on to something very trite, something that may cause you to smile: the comparison of women to flowers, and also of flowers to women. Here, of course, there are far too many easy examples. But there is one I would like to recall (perhaps it may not be familiar to you) from that unfinished masterwork, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston. Stevenson tells of his hero going into a church, in Scotland, where he sees a girl-a lovely girl, we are made to feel. And one feels that he is about to fall in love with her. Because he looks at her, and then he wonders whether there is an immortal soul within that beautiful frame, or whether she is a mere animal the color of flowers. And the brutality of the word “animal” is of course destroyed by “the color of flowers.” I don’t think we need any other examples of this pattern, which can be found in all ages, in all tongues, in all literatures. 现在我们要谈一个非常老生常谈的话题，可能会让你们会心一笑：将女性比作花朵，以及将花朵比作女性。当然，这类例子俯拾皆是。但我想引用一个你们或许不太熟悉的例子——出自罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森未完成的杰作《赫米斯顿的韦尔》。史蒂文森描写他的主人公走进苏格兰一座教堂，遇见了一位令人怦然心动的少女。你能感觉到他即将坠入爱河。当他凝视她时，不禁思索：这具美丽的躯壳里是否栖居着不朽的灵魂？抑或她只是朵拥有花朵色泽的动物？"动物"这个词的粗粝感，自然被"花朵色泽"这个表述消解了。这个贯穿古今、跨越语言与文学的经典比喻，我想无需再举其他例证了。
Now let us go on to another of the essential patterns of metaphor: the pattern of life’s being a 现在让我们转向另一个根本性的隐喻范式：将生命视为
dream-the feeling that comes over us that life is a dream. The evident example which occurs to us is: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” ^(10){ }^{10} Now, this may sound like blasphemy-I love Shakespeare too much to care-but I think that here, if we look at it (and I don’t think we should look at it too closely; we should rather be grateful to Shakespeare for this and his many other gifts), there is a very slight contradiction between the fact that our lives are dreamlike or have a dreamlike essence in them, and the rather sweeping statement, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” Because if we are real in dreams, or if we are merely dreamers of dreams, then I wonder if we can make such sweeping statements. This sentence of Shakespeare’s belongs rather to philosophy or to metaphysics than to poetry-though of course it is heightened, it is lifted up into poetry, by the context. 梦——那种笼罩我们的感觉，觉得人生如梦。最明显的例子莫过于："我们是用与梦境相同的材料构成的。" ^(10){ }^{10} 这话听起来或许像亵渎——我太热爱莎士比亚了，所以不在乎——但我觉得此处（虽然我认为不该过分深究；我们更应该感谢莎士比亚赐予这句话以及他诸多其他馈赠），在我们的生活如梦似幻或具有梦幻本质这一事实，与"我们是用与梦境相同的材料构成的"这个相当笼统的断言之间，存在着细微的矛盾。因为如果我们在梦中是真实的，或者我们仅仅是梦境的造梦者，那么我不确定我们是否能做出如此笼统的断言。莎士比亚这句话更属于哲学或形而上学范畴，而非诗歌——当然，在上下文的烘托下，它被提升到了诗歌的高度。
Another example of the same pattern comes from a great German poet-a minor poet beside Shakespeare (but I suppose all poets are minor beside him, except two or three). It is a very famous piece by Walther von der Vogelweide. I suppose I should say it thus (I wonder how good my Middle German isyou will have to forgive me): “Ist mir mîn leben getroumet, oder ist es war?” “Have I dreamt my life, 同样的模式还有另一个例证，出自一位伟大的德国诗人——在莎士比亚身旁他只能算小诗人（不过我猜想除两三位之外，所有诗人在莎翁身旁都相形见绌）。这是瓦尔特·冯·德·福格尔魏德的一首名篇。我应当这样吟诵（不知我的中古德语是否准确，还望诸位见谅）：“Ist mir mîn leben getroumet, oder ist es war?”“我这一生是场幻梦，
or was it a true one?” ^(11){ }^{11} I think this comes nearer to what the poet is trying to say, because instead of a sweeping affirmation we have a question. The poet is wondering. This has happened to all of us, but we have not worded it as Walther von der Vogelweide did. He is asking himself, “Ist mir mîn leben getroumet, oder ist es war?” and this hesitation gives us that dreamlike essence of life, I think. 抑或真实存在？” ^(11){ }^{11} 我以为这更贴近诗人的本意，因为取代斩钉截铁断言的，是一个犹疑的诘问。诗人正陷入沉思。此般体验你我皆有，却无人能像福格尔魏德这般精准道破。他叩问自己：“Ist mir mîn leben getroumet, oder ist es war?”，而这踌躇迟疑，我想，恰为我们揭示了人生如梦的本质。
I don’t remember whether in my last lecture (because this is a sentence I often quote over and over again, and have quoted all through my life) I gave you the quotation from the Chinese philosopher Chuan Tzu. He dreamt that he was a butterfly, and, on waking up, he did not know whether he was a man who had had a dream he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who was now dreaming he was a man. This metaphor is, I think, the finest of all. First because it begins with a dream, so afterwards, when he awakens, his life has still something dreamlike about it. And second because, with a kind of almost miraculous happiness, he has chosen the right animal. Had he said, “Chuan Tzu had a dream that he was a tiger,” then there would be nothing in it. A butterfly has something delicate and evanescent about it. If we are dreams, the true way to suggest this is with a butterfly and not a tiger. If 不记得在上次讲座中（因这句话我常反复引用，一生都在引用）是否向诸位引述过中国哲人庄子的名言。他曾梦见自己化为蝴蝶，醒来后竟不知是庄周梦中化蝶，还是蝴蝶此刻正梦着庄周。我以为这个隐喻堪称绝妙。其一，它始于梦境，故而觉醒后的人生仍带着梦幻色彩；其二，他以近乎神启的幸运选对了动物。若他说"庄子梦见自己变成猛虎"，便索然无味了。蝴蝶自带纤巧易逝的特质。倘若人生如幻梦，用蝴蝶而非猛虎来诠释方显精妙。若
Chuan Tzu had a dream he was a typewriter, it would be no good at all. Or a whale-that would do him no good either. I think he has chosen just the right word for what he is trying to say. 庄子梦见自己变成打字机，那将毫无意趣；或梦成鲸鱼——同样不得要领。我认为他精准选择了最贴切的意象来传达所思。
Let us try to follow another pattern-the very common one that links up the ideas of sleeping and dying. This is quite common in everyday speech also; yet if we look for examples, we shall find that they are very different. I think that somewhere in Homer he speaks of the “iron sleep of death.” ^(12){ }^{12} Here he gives us two opposite ideas: death is a kind of sleep, yet that kind of sleep is made of a hard, ruthless, and cruel metal—iron. It is a kind of sleep that is unbroken and unbreakable. Of course, we have Heine here also: “Der Tod daß ist die frühe Nacht.” And since we are north of Boston, I think we must remember those perhaps too-well-known lines by Robert Frost: 让我们尝试跟随另一种模式——将睡眠与死亡联系起来的常见模式。这在日常语言中也相当普遍；但若我们寻找例证，便会发现它们大相径庭。我记得荷马在某处提及"死亡的铁铸沉睡" ^(12){ }^{12} ，这里他呈现了两个对立的概念：死亡是一种睡眠，而这种睡眠却由坚硬、无情且残酷的金属——铁所铸就。这是一种无法打破且永不苏醒的沉睡。当然，海涅也有类似表达："死亡即是提早降临的夜晚。"既然我们身处波士顿以北，我想必须提及罗伯特·弗罗斯特那些或许过于耳熟能详的诗句：
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. ^(13){ }^{13} 这片树林可爱幽深，但我已许下诺言不能停，安眠之前还有万里路要行，安眠之前还有万里路要行。 ^(13){ }^{13}
These lines are so perfect that we hardly think of a trick. Yet, unhappily, all literature is made of tricks, and those tricks get-in the long run-found out. 这些诗句如此完美，以至于我们几乎察觉不到技巧的存在。然而不幸的是，所有文学作品都由技巧构成，而这些技巧终将被识破。
And then the reader tires of them. But in this case the trick is so unobtrusive that I feel rather ashamed of myself for calling it a trick (I call it this merely for want of a better word). Because Frost has attempted something very daring here. We have the same line repeated word for word, twice over, yet the sense is different. “And miles to go before I sleep”: this is merely physical-the miles are miles in space, in New England, and “sleep” means “go to sleep.” The second time-“And miles to go before I sleep”-we are made to feel that the miles are not only in space but in time, and that “sleep” means “die” or “rest.” Had the poet said so in so many words, he would have been far less effective. Because, as I understand it, anything suggested is far more effective than anything laid down. Perhaps the human mind has a tendency to deny a statement. Remember what Emerson said: arguments convince nobody. They convince nobody because they are presented as arguments. Then we look at them, we weigh them, we turn them over, and we decide against them. 随后读者便会对它们感到厌倦。但在这个例子中，这种手法运用得如此不着痕迹，以至于我为自己称之为"手法"感到有些羞愧（我这么称呼仅仅是因为找不到更合适的词）。因为弗罗斯特在此尝试了一件非常大胆的事。我们看到完全相同的诗句被逐字重复了两次，但含义却不同。"还有数里路要赶才能安眠"：这仅是物理意义上的——那数里是空间中的距离，在新英格兰，"安眠"意为"入睡"。而第二次出现"还有数里路要赶才能安眠"时，我们感受到那数里不仅是空间距离更是时间距离，"安眠"意味着"长眠"或"安息"。倘若诗人直白道明，效果定会大打折扣。因为在我看来，暗示之物远比明说之物更有力量。或许人类心智天生就倾向于否定断言。想想爱默生的话：论据说服不了任何人。它们无法说服人，正因为它们以论据的形式呈现。于是我们审视它们，权衡它们，反复推敲，最终予以否定。
But when something is merely said or-better still-hinted at, there is a kind of hospitality in our imagination. We are ready to accept it. I remember reading, some thirty years ago, the works of Martin 然而当某些事物仅被言说——或更妙的是被暗示时，我们的想象力便会展现出一种包容。我们已准备好接纳它。约三十年前，我初读马丁·布伯的著作时
Buber-I thought of them as being wonderful poems. Then, when I went to Buenos Aires, I read a book by a friend of mine, Dujovne, ^(14){ }^{14} and I found in its pages, much to my astonishment, that Martin Buber was a philosopher and that all his philosophy lay in the books I had read as poetry. Perhaps I had accepted those books because they came to me through poetry, through suggestion, through the music of poetry, and not as arguments. I think that somewhere in Walt Whitman the same idea can be found: the idea of reasons being unconvincing. I think he says somewhere that he finds the night air, the large few stars, far more convincing than mere arguments. 曾将其视为绝妙的诗篇。后来当我来到布宜诺斯艾利斯，在挚友杜霍夫内的著作中惊讶地发现，马丁·布伯实为哲学家，而我此前当作诗歌品读的著作竟承载着他全部的哲学思想。或许我之所以接纳这些书，正因为它们是以诗的形式、以暗示的方式、以诗歌的韵律抵达我心，而非以论证的姿态。我想沃尔特·惠特曼的某处也流露过相似见解——关于理性论证之苍白。记得他曾在某处写道：夜的气息，寥落的星辰，远比任何论证更具说服力。
We may think of other patterns of metaphor. Let us now take the example (this is not as common as the other ones) of a battle and a fire. In the Iliad, we find the image of a battle blazing like a fire. We have the same idea in the heroic fragment of Finnesburg. ^(15){ }^{15} In that fragment we are told of the Danes fighting the Frisians, of the glitter of the weapons, the shields and swords, and so on. Then the writer says that it seemed as if all Finnesburg, as if the whole castle of Finn, were on fire. 我们可以思考其他类型的隐喻模式。现在以战斗与火焰为例（这种比喻不如前几种常见）。在《伊利亚特》中，我们能看到战斗如烈火般熊熊燃烧的意象。同样的构思也出现在《芬尼斯堡》的英雄史诗片段中。 ^(15){ }^{15} 该片段描述了丹麦人与弗里斯兰人的激战，描绘了武器、盾牌与刀剑的寒光等等。随后作者写道：仿佛整个芬尼斯堡，仿佛芬恩的整座城堡都在烈火中燃烧。
I suppose I have left out some quite common patterns. We have so far taken up eyes and stars, women 我想我遗漏了一些相当常见的意象模式。到目前为止，我们已经探讨了眼睛与星辰、女性
and flowers, time and rivers, life and dream, death and sleeping, fire and battles. Had we time and learning enough, we might find half a dozen other patterns, and perhaps those might give us most of the metaphors in literature. 花朵与时间，河流与生命，梦境与死亡，沉睡与火焰，战斗与纷争。倘若我们拥有足够的时间和学识，或许还能发现另外五六种隐喻模式，而这些模式很可能就涵盖了文学中绝大多数的隐喻表达。
What is really important is the fact not that there are a few patterns, but that those patterns are capable of almost endless variations. The reader who cares for poetry and not for the theory of poetry might read, for example, “I wish I were the night,” and then afterwards “A monster made of eyes” or “The stars looked down,” and never stop to think that these can be traced back to a single pattern. If I were a daring thinker (but I am not; I am a very timid thinker, I am groping my way along), I could of course say that only a dozen or so patterns exist and that all other metaphors are mere arbitrary games. This would amount to the statement that among the “ten thousand things” of the Chinese definition, only some twelve essential affinities may be found. Because, of course, you can find other affinities that are merely astonishing, and astonishment hardly lasts more than a moment. 真正重要的并非存在几种固定模式，而是这些模式能够衍生出几乎无穷的变化。比如，一位只关注诗歌本身而非诗论的读者读到"我愿化作黑夜"，随后又读到"由眼睛组成的怪物"或"群星俯视大地"时，根本不会想到这些意象都源自同一种模式。倘若我是个大胆的思想者（但我并非如此；我的思维极其谨慎，始终在摸索中前行），我大可以宣称世上仅存在十余种基本模式，其余所有隐喻都不过是随意编排的游戏。这无异于说，在中国人所谓"万物"之中，仅能找到约十二种本质关联。因为显而易见，你还能发现其他仅令人惊诧的关联，而惊诧之情往往转瞬即逝。
I remember that I have forgotten quite a good example of the dream-and-life equation. But I think I can recall it now: it is by the American poet Cummings. 我记得自己遗忘了一个关于"梦与生活等同"的绝佳例证。但现在我想起来了：它出自美国诗人卡明斯之手。
There are four lines. I must apologize for the first. Evidently it was written by a young man, writing for young men, and I can no longer claim the privilege-I am far too old for that kind of game. But the stanza should be quoted in full. The first line is: “god’s terrible face, brighter than a spoon.” I am rather sorry about the spoon, because of course one feels that he thought at first of a sword, or of a candle, or of the sun, or of a shield, or of something traditionally shining; and then he said, “No—after all, I’m modern, so I’ll work in a spoon.” And so he got his spoon. But we may forgive him that for what comes afterwards: “god’s terrible face, brighter than a spoon, / collects the image of one fatal word.” This second line is better, I think. And as my friend Murchison said to me, in a spoon we often have many images collected. I had never thought of that, because I had been taken aback by the spoon and did not want to think much about it. 这里共有四行诗。我必须为第一行致歉——显然这是年轻人写给年轻人的诗句，而我不再享有这种特权，毕竟年岁已长，不适合这类游戏。但这段诗应当完整引用。首行写道："神明可怖的面容，比汤匙更明亮。"我对"汤匙"一词颇感遗憾，因为显然作者最初想到的可能是剑刃、蜡烛、太阳、盾牌这类传统意义上的发光体，随后却转念："不，毕竟我是个现代派，得用汤匙来写。"于是便有了这个汤匙意象。不过鉴于后续诗句，我们或许可以原谅他："神明可怖的面容，比汤匙更明亮/汇聚着某个致命词汇的影像。"我认为第二行更胜一筹。正如友人默奇森所言，汤匙表面往往映照多重影像。我从未想到这点，当时完全被"汤匙"惊住，不愿深究。
god’s terrible face, brighter than a spoon, collects the image of one fatal word, so that my life (which liked the sun and the moon) resembles something that has not occurred. ^(16){ }^{16} 神明可怖的面容，比汤匙更明亮，汇聚着某个致命词汇的影像，因此我的一生（曾爱慕日月辉光）仿若从未存在过的幻象。 ^(16){ }^{16}
“Resembles something that has not occurred”: this line carries a kind of strange simplicity. I think it gives “看似未曾发生之事”：这句诗带着一种奇异的朴素。我想它赋予
us the dreamlike essence of life better than those more famous poets, Shakespeare and Walther von der Vogelweide. 他比那些更著名的诗人——莎士比亚和瓦尔特·冯·德·福格威德——更能向我们展现生活的梦幻本质。
Of course, I have chosen only a few examples. I am sure your memories are full of metaphors that you have treasured up-metaphors that you may be hoping I will quote. I know that after this lecture I shall feel remorse coming over me, thinking of the many beautiful metaphors I have missed. And of course you will say to me, in an aside, “But why did you omit that wonderful metaphor by So-and-So?” And then I will have to fumble and to apologize. 当然，我只挑选了几个例子。我相信你们的记忆中珍藏着许多隐喻——那些你们或许期待我引用的隐喻。我知道讲座结束后，懊悔会涌上心头，因为我想起自己遗漏了那么多美妙的隐喻。你们肯定会悄悄对我说："可你为何漏掉了某某的那个精彩隐喻呢？"届时我将支吾着向你们致歉。
But now, I think, we might go on to metaphors that seem to stand outside the old patterns. And since I have spoken of the moon, I will take a Persian metaphor I read somewhere in Brown’s history of Persian literature. Let us say it came from Farid al-Din Attar or Omar Khayyám, or Hafiz, ^(17){ }^{17} or another of the great Persian poets. He speaks of the moon, calling it “the mirror of time.” I suppose that, from the point of view of astronomy, the idea of the moon being a mirror is as it should be-but this is quite irrelevant from the poetic point of view. Whether in fact the moon is or is not a mirror has no importance whatever, since poetry speaks to the imagination. Let us look at the 但此刻，我想我们可以探讨那些看似跳脱传统框架的隐喻。既然我已提及月亮，不妨引用我在布朗《波斯文学史》中读到的波斯隐喻——或许出自阿塔尔、欧玛尔·海亚姆、哈菲兹，抑或其他波斯诗豪。诗人将月亮称为"时间的明镜"。从天文学视角看，月亮作为镜子的意象或许恰如其分——但这与诗学视角毫不相干。月亮是否真为镜子无关宏旨，因诗歌诉诸想象。让我们将
moon as a mirror of time. I think this is a very fine metaphor-first, because the idea of a mirror gives us the brightness and the fragility of the moon, and, second, because the idea of time makes us suddenly remember that that very clear moon we are looking at is very ancient, is full of poetry and mythology, is as old as time. 月亮视作时间的明镜。我以为此喻绝妙：其一，"明镜"道出了月亮的清辉与易逝；其二，"时间"让我们骤然惊觉，此刻凝望的皎洁月轮何其古老，满载诗篇与神话，与时光本身同寿。
Since I’ve used the phrase “as old as time,” I must quote another line-one that perhaps is bubbling up in your memory. I can’t recall the name of the author. I found it quoted by Kipling in a not-too-memorable book of his called From Sea to Sea: “A rose-red city, half as old as Time.” ^(18){ }^{18} Had the poet written “A rose-red city, as old as Time,” he would have written nothing at all. But “half as old as Time” gives it a kind of magic precision-the same kind of magic precision that is achieved by that strange and common English phrase, “I will love you forever and a day.” “Forever” means “a very long time,” but it is too abstract to appeal to the imagination. 既然我用了"与时间一样古老"这个短语，就不得不引用另一句诗——或许此刻它正在你的记忆中翻涌。我记不起作者的名字，是在吉卜林那本不太出名的《从大海到大海》中看到的引文："一座玫瑰红的城市，其历史只有时间之半。" ^(18){ }^{18} 倘若诗人写成"一座玫瑰红的城市，与时间一样古老"，那就平淡无奇了。但"其历史只有时间之半"却赋予诗句一种神奇的精确感——正如英语中那个奇特又常见的表达"我将爱你直到永远再加一天"所达到的效果。"永远"意味着"很长的时间"，但太过抽象难以激发想象。
We have the same kind of trick (I apologize for the use of this word) in the name of that famous book, the Thousand and One Nights. For “the thousand nights” means to the imagination “the many nights,” even as “forty” used to mean “many” in the seventeenth cen- 同样的修辞手法（请原谅我用这个词）也体现在《一千零一夜》这个著名书名中。"一千夜"在想象中意味着"许多个夜晚"，正如十七世纪时"四十"常用来表示"许多"——
tury. “When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,” writes Shakespeare; ^(19){ }^{19} and I think of the common English expression “forty winks” for “a nap.” For “forty” means “many.” And here you have the “thousand nights and a night”-like “a rose-red city” and the fanciful precision of “half as old as Time,” which of course makes time seem even longer. 莎士比亚写道："当四十个严冬围攻你的眉梢"； ^(19){ }^{19} 这让我想起英语中常用"四十次眨眼"来表示"小憩"。因为"四十"意味着"许多"。这里你看到的是类似"一千零一夜"的表达方式——就像"玫瑰红的城市"和"其历史只有时间之半"这种充满想象力的精确表述，当然这反而让时间显得更为悠长。
In order to consider different metaphors, I will now go back-inevitably, you might say-to my favorite Anglo-Saxons. I remember that very common kenning ^(20){ }^{20} which calls the sea “the whale road.” I wonder whether the unknown Saxon who first coined that kenning knew how fine it was. I wonder whether he felt (though this need hardly concern us) that the hugeness of the whale suggested and emphasized the hugeness of the sea. 为了探讨不同的隐喻，我不得不——或许你会说这是必然的——再次回到我最钟爱的盎格鲁-撒克逊文学。我记得那个极为常见的复合词 ^(20){ }^{20} ，它将海洋称为"鲸鱼之路"。我不禁思索，那位最早创造这个复合词的无名撒克逊诗人是否知晓其精妙之处。他是否感受到（虽然这并非我们关注的重点）鲸鱼的庞然身躯暗示并强化了海洋的浩瀚无垠。
There is another metaphor-a Norse one, about blood. The common kenning for blood is “the water of the serpent.” In this metaphor, you have the no-tion-which we find also among the Saxons-of a sword as an essentially evil being, a being that lapped up the blood of men as if it were water. 另一个关于血液的隐喻源自北欧文学。常见的复合词将血液称为"蛇之水"。这个隐喻中蕴含着一种观念——我们在撒克逊文学中也曾见到——将剑视为本质邪恶的存在，它像饮水般贪婪啜饮人类的鲜血。
Then we have the metaphors for battle. Some of them are quite trite-for example, “meeting of men.” Here, perhaps, there is something quite fine: the idea 此外还有关于战争的隐喻。其中有些相当陈腐，比如"勇士的会面"。但或许其中也蕴含着精妙之处：这种表达
of men meeting to kill each other (as if no other “meetings” were possible). But we also have “the meeting of swords,” “the dance of swords,” “the clash of armor,” “the clash of shields.” All of them may be found in the “Ode” of Brunanburh. And there is another fine one: porn æneoht, “a meeting of anger.” Here the metaphor is impressive perhaps because, when we think of meeting, we think of fellowship, of friendship; and then there comes the contrast, the meeting of anger. 人们相遇只为互相残杀（仿佛不存在其他"相遇"的可能）。但我们也能见到"剑刃的相遇"、"刀剑之舞"、"铠甲的碰撞"、"盾牌的相击"——这些意象都可在《布鲁南堡之战》颂诗中找到。还有一处精妙的表达：porn æneoht，"愤怒的相遇"。这个隐喻之所以震撼，或许因为"相遇"本令人联想到情谊与友爱，而此处却形成强烈反差——愤怒的相遇。
But these metaphors are nothing, I should say, compared to a very fine Norse and -strangely enough-Irish metaphor about the battle. It calls the battle “the web of men.” The word “web” is really wonderful here, for in the idea of a web we get the pattern of a medieval battle: we have the swords, the shields, the crossing of the weapons. Also, there is the nightmare touch of a web being made of living beings. “A web of men”: a web of men who are dying and killing each other. 但我要说，与一个绝妙的北欧隐喻（奇怪的是它同样存在于爱尔兰诗歌中）相比，这些比喻都黯然失色。它将战役称为"人织之网"。"网"字在此处用得精妙绝伦，因为网的意象恰好呈现了中世纪战争的图景：纵横交错的剑盾与兵器。更令人毛骨悚然的是，这张网由活人编织而成。"人织之网"：一张由互相杀戮的垂死者编织的网。
There suddenly comes to my mind a metaphor from Góngora that is rather like the “web of men.” He is speaking of a traveler who comes to a “bárbara aldea”-to a “barbarous village”; and then that village weaves a rope of dogs around him. 我忽然想起贡戈拉的一个相似隐喻——"人织之网"。他描写旅人来到"蛮荒村落"（bárbara aldea），随后那个村庄用群犬为他编织了一条绳索。
Como suele tejer 如常编织
Bárbara aldea 荒村
Soga de perros 犬索
Contra forastero. 拒异客。
So, strangely enough, we have the same image: the idea of a rope or web made of living beings. Yet even in those cases that seem to be synonyms, there is quite a difference. A rope of dogs is somehow baroque and grotesque, while “web of men” has something terrible, something awful about it. 奇怪的是，我们竟拥有相同的意象：用活物编织绳索或罗网的概念。然而即便在这些看似同义的表述中，仍存在显著差异。"犬索"带有某种巴洛克式的怪诞，而"人网"则蕴含着某种可怖的、令人战栗的特质。
To end up, I will take a metaphor, or a comparison (after all, I am not a professor and the difference need hardly worry me), by the now-forgotten Byron. I read the poem when I was a boy-I suppose you all read it at a very tender age. Yet two or three days ago I suddenly discovered that that metaphor was a very complex one. I had never thought of Byron as being especially complex. You all know the words: “She walks in beauty, like the night.” ^(21){ }^{21} The line is so perfect that we take it for granted. We think, “Well, we could have written that, had we cared to.” But only Byron cared to write it. 最后，我想引用已被世人遗忘的拜伦所用的一个隐喻或比喻（毕竟我不是教授，这种区别对我而言无关紧要）。我年少时读过这首诗——想必诸位也在稚龄时读过。然而就在两三天前，我突然发现这个隐喻其实极为精妙。我从未想过拜伦的作品会如此深邃。你们都熟悉这句诗："她款款而行，如夜色般动人。" ^(21){ }^{21} 这句诗完美得让我们习以为常，甚至觉得"若我们愿意，也能写出这样的诗句"。但唯有拜伦真正付诸笔端。
I come now to the hidden and secret complexity of the line. I suppose you have already found out what I am now going to reveal to you. (Because this always 现在我要谈谈诗句背后隐秘而复杂的奥妙。想必你们已经察觉到我即将揭示的内容。（因为这种情况总是
happens with surprises, no? It happens to us when we’re reading a detective novel.) “She walks in beauty, like the night”: at the beginning we have a lovely woman; then we are told that she walks in beauty. This somehow suggests the French language-something like “vous êtes en beauté,” and so on. But: “She walks in beauty, like the night.” We have, in the first instance, a lovely woman, a lovely lady, likened to the night. But in order to understand the line, we have to think of the night as a woman also; if not, the line is meaningless. So within those very simple words, we have a double metaphor: a woman is likened to the night, but the night is likened to a woman. I do not know and I do not care whether Byron knew this. I think if he had known it, the verse would hardly be as good as it is. Perhaps before he died he found it out, or somebody pointed it out to him. （就像侦探小说中的意外转折，不是吗？我们在阅读时也会遇到这种情况。）"她款款而行，如夜色般美丽"：开篇我们见到一位可爱的女子；接着被告知她行走于美丽之中。这隐约让人联想到法语中的表达——类似"您正处在美丽中"之类的说法。但："她款款而行，如夜色般美丽"。首先，我们有一位可爱的女子，一位优雅的女士，被比作夜色。然而要理解这句诗，我们必须也将夜色想象成女性；否则这句诗就毫无意义。因此在这极其简单的词句中，存在双重隐喻：女子被喻为夜色，而夜色又被喻为女子。我不知道也不在乎拜伦是否意识到这点。我认为若他知晓此事，这句诗恐怕难以保持现有的韵味。或许在他去世前发现了这个奥秘，又或许有人向他指出过。
Now we are led to the two obvious and major conclusions of this lecture. The first is, of course, that though there are hundreds and indeed thousands of metaphors to be found, they may all be traced back to a few simple patterns. But this need not trouble us, since each metaphor is different: every time the pattern is used, the variations are different. And the second conclusion is that there are metaphors-for 现在，我们得出本次讲座两个显而易见的重要结论。首先，尽管存在成百上千种隐喻，但它们都可追溯至几种基本模式。但这无需困扰我们，因为每个隐喻都是独特的：每当运用某种模式时，其变体都各不相同。第二个结论则是——存在着
example, “web of men,” or “whale road”-that may not be traced back to definite patterns. 例如“人网”或“鲸路”——这些意象或许无法追溯到确切的模式。
So I think that the outlook-even after my lec-ture-is quite good for the metaphor. Because, if we like, we may try our hand at new variations of the major trends. The variations would be very beautiful, and only a few critics like myself would take the trouble to say, “Well, there you have eyes and stars and there you have time and the river over and over again.” The metaphors will strike the imagination. But it may also be given to us-and why not hope for this as well?-it may also be given to us to invent metaphors that do not belong, or that do not yet belong, to accepted patterns. 因此我认为，即便经过我的讲座，隐喻的前景依然相当光明。因为只要我们愿意，就可以尝试对主流趋势进行新的变奏。这些变奏将无比美妙，只有少数像我这样的评论家才会不厌其烦地指出："看啊，这里又是眼睛与星辰，那里还是时间与河流的反复组合。"这些隐喻会激发想象力。但或许我们还能——为何不怀抱这样的期待呢？——或许我们还能创造出尚未归入既定模式的隐喻，或根本不属于任何现有范式的隐喻。
THE 《诗艺》TELLING OF 述说THE TALE 故事
Verbal distinctions should be valued, since they stand for mental-intellectual-distinctions. Yet one feels it is somehow a pity that the word “poet” should have been split asunder. For nowadays when we speak of a poet, we think only of the utterer of such lyric, birdlike notes as “With ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh, / Like stars in heaven” (Wordsworth), ^(1){ }^{1} or “Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? / Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.” Whereas the ancients, when they spoke of a poet-a “maker”-thought of him not only as the utterer of those high lyric notes, but also as the teller of a tale. A tale wherein all the voices of mankind might be found-not only the lyric, the wistful, the 言语的区分应当受到重视，因为它们代表着思想与智识的区分。然而人们总觉得"诗人"这个词被割裂开来是件憾事。如今当我们说起诗人，想到的只是那些吟咏抒情短章、发出鸟鸣般声音的人，比如华兹华斯笔下"海面上点点白帆远近散布/宛若夜空的星辰"，或是莎士比亚"既有仙乐入耳，何故闻乐生悲？/甜蜜不与甜蜜相争，欢乐自与欢乐为伴"。而古人谈及诗人——"创造者"时，不仅视其为抒发崇高抒情音符的歌者，更是故事的讲述者。那些故事里汇聚着人类所有的声音——不仅有抒情、怅惘与
melancholy, but also the voices of courage and of hope. This means that I am speaking of what I suppose is the oldest form of poetry: the epic. Let us consider a few of them. 忧郁，更包含着勇气与希望的呐喊。这意味着我要探讨的正是诗歌最古老的形式：史诗。让我们细究其中几部典范。
Perhaps the first which comes to our mind is the one that Andrew Lang, who so finely translated it, called The Tale of Troy. We will look into it for that very ancient telling of a tale. In the very first line, we have something like: “Tell me, muse, of the anger of Achilles.” Or, as Professor Rouse, I think, has translated it: “An angry man-that is my subject.” ^(3){ }^{3} Perhaps Homer, or the man we call Homer (for that is an old question, of course), thought he was writing his poem about an angry man, and this somehow disconcerts us. For we think of anger as the Latins did: “ira furor brevis”-anger is a brief madness, a fit of madness. The plot of the Iliad is really, in itself, not a charming one-the idea of the hero sulking in his tent, feeling that the king has dealt unjustly with him, and then taking up the war as a private feud because his friend has been killed, and afterwards selling the dead man he has killed to the man’s father. 或许我们首先想到的，是安德鲁·朗精美译作《特洛伊传说》的那个版本。我们将从中探寻这个古老故事的讲述方式。开篇第一行便写道："缪斯啊，请为我诉说阿喀琉斯的愤怒。"或者如劳斯教授所译："我的主题是一个愤怒之人。" ^(3){ }^{3} 或许荷马——或我们称之为荷马的那个人（这当然是个古老的问题）——认为自己写的是关于一个愤怒之人的诗篇，这多少让我们感到困惑。因为我们像古罗马人那样理解愤怒："愤怒是短暂的疯狂"，一阵狂乱的发作。《伊利亚特》的情节本身并不动人——英雄因自觉遭受国王不公对待而在营帐中生闷气，后因挚友战死将战争转为私人复仇，最终还将所杀之人的尸体卖还给其父。
But perhaps (I may have said this before; I am sure I have), perhaps the intentions of the poet are not that important. What is important nowadays is that al- 但或许（我可能之前说过；我确信说过），诗人的意图并不那么重要。如今重要的是...
though Homer might have thought he was telling that story, he was actually telling something far finer: the story of a man, a hero, who is attacking a city he knows he will never conquer, who knows he will die before it falls; and the still more stirring tale of men defending a city whose doom is already known to them, a city that is already in flames. I think this is the real subject of the Iliad. And, in fact, men have always felt that the Trojans were the real heroes. We think of Virgil, but we may also think of Snorri Sturluson, ^(4){ }^{4} who, in his younger era, wrote that Odin-the Odin of the Saxons, the god-was the son of Priam and the brother of Hector. Men have sought kinship with the defeated Trojans, and not with the victorious Greeks. This is perhaps because there is a dignity in defeat that hardly belongs to victory. 尽管荷马或许以为自己讲述的是那个故事，但他实际呈现的却是更为精妙的内容：一个明知无法攻陷城池、注定在城破前殒命的英雄的故事；以及更为震撼的，关于守卫一座已知命运、已然烈焰焚城的勇士们的史诗。我认为这才是《伊利亚特》真正的主题。事实上，人们始终认为特洛伊人才是真正的英雄。我们想到维吉尔，也会想起斯诺里·斯蒂德吕松 ^(4){ }^{4} ，他在青年时代曾写道：奥丁——撒克逊人的神祇——实为普里阿摩斯之子，赫克托耳之弟。人类总在战败的特洛伊人而非胜利的希腊人身上寻找血脉共鸣，或许正因为失败中蕴含的尊严，是胜利难以企及的。
Let us take a second epic, the Odyssey. The Odyssey may be read in two ways. I suppose the man (or the woman, as Samuel Butler thought) ^(5){ }^{5} who had written it felt that there were really two stories: the homecoming of Ulysses, and the marvels and perils of the sea. If we take the Odyssey in the first sense, then we have the idea of homecoming, the idea that we are in banishment, that our true home is in the past or in heaven or somewhere else, that we are never at home. 让我们以另一部史诗《奥德赛》为例。《奥德赛》可以从两种角度来解读。我想那位作者（或如塞缪尔·巴特勒所认为的女性作者）在创作时已意识到其中实际包含两个故事：尤利西斯的归乡之旅，以及海上遭遇的奇观与险境。若从第一种角度来理解《奥德赛》，我们便触及了"归乡"这一主题——那种身处流放之境的感受，意识到我们真正的家园存在于往昔、天堂或某处遥不可及之地，而我们始终处于无家可归的状态。
But of course the seafaring and the homecoming had to be made interesting. So the many marvels were worked in. And already, when we come to the Arabian Nights, we find that the Arabian version of the Odyssey, the Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor, is not a story of homecoming but a story of adventure; and I think we read it thus. When we read the Odyssey, I think that what we feel is the glamour, the magic of the sea; what we feel is what we find in the seafarer. For example, he has no heart for the harp, nor for the giving of rings, nor for the delight of a woman, nor for the greatness of the world. He thinks only of the long sea salt streams. So that we have both stories in one: we can read it as a homecoming, and we can read it as a tale of adventure-perhaps the finest that has ever been written or sung. 当然，航海与归乡的故事必须引人入胜。于是诸多奇观被编织其中。当我们读到《天方夜谭》时，会发现阿拉伯版的《奥德赛》——水手辛巴达的七次航行——已不再是归乡故事，而纯粹是冒险传奇；我想我们正是这样阅读它的。读《奥德赛》时，我们感受到的是海洋的魅力与魔力；我们体会到的正是航海者心中的悸动。例如，他对竖琴无动于衷，对馈赠戒指毫无兴趣，对女性的欢愉漠然置之，对世间的荣华亦不屑一顾。他只思念那咸涩绵长的海流。因此我们在一部作品中看到了双重叙事：既可将其视为归乡史诗，亦可当作冒险传奇——或许是有史以来最伟大的冒险诗篇。
We come now to a third “poem” that looms far above them: the four Gospels. The Gospels may also be read in two ways. By the believer, they are read as the strange story of a man, of a god, who atones for the sins of mankind. A god who condescends to suf-fering-to death on the “bitter cross,” as Shakespeare has it. ^(6){ }^{6} There is a still stranger interpretation, which I found in Langland: ^(7){ }^{7} the idea that God wanted to know all about human suffering, and that it was not 现在我们来看第三首"诗"，它远远凌驾于其他作品之上：四福音书。福音书也有两种解读方式。信徒将其视为一个奇特的故事——关于一个人，一位神，为人类罪恶赎罪的故事。这位神屈尊承受苦难，如莎士比亚所言，在"痛苦的十字架"上赴死。还有一种更为奇特的解释，我在朗格兰的作品中读到过：上帝想要彻底了解人类的苦难，而不仅仅是
enough for Him to know it intellectually, as a god might; he wanted to suffer as a man, and with the limitations of a man. However, if you are an unbeliever (many of us are) then you can read the story in a different way. You can think of a man of genius, of a man who thought he was a god and who at the end found out that he was merely a man, and that god-his god-had forsaken him. 仅凭理智去理解对他而言是不够的，如同神明那般；他渴望以凡人之躯承受苦难，带着凡人的局限。但若你不信神（我们中许多人如此），你便可用另一种方式解读这个故事。你可以想象一个天才，一个自诩为神的人，最终却发现他不过是凡人，而他的神——他所信奉的神——已将他遗弃。
It might be said that for many centuries, those three stories-the tale of Troy, the tale of Ulysses, the tale of Jesus-have been sufficient for mankind. People have been telling and retelling them over and over again; they have been set to music; they have been painted. People have told them many times over, yet the stories are still there, illimitable. You might think of somebody, in a thousand years or ten thousand years, writing them over again. But in the case of the Gospels, there is a difference: the story of Christ, I think, cannot be told better. It has been told many times over, yet I think the few verses where we read, for example, of Christ being tempted by Satan are stronger than all four books of Paradise Regained. One feels that Milton perhaps had no inkling as to what kind of a man Christ was. 可以说，千百年来，那三个故事——特洛伊的传说、尤利西斯的传说、耶稣的传说——对人类而言已然足够。人们反复传颂它们，将它们谱成乐曲，绘成画作。这些故事被讲述过无数次，却依然生生不息、无穷无尽。你或许会想象，千年或万年之后，仍会有人重述这些故事。但福音书的情况有所不同：我认为基督的故事已臻至完美。它被反复传诵，但比如描述基督受撒旦试探的那几节经文，其力量就胜过《复乐园》四卷的总和。人们能感觉到，弥尔顿或许对基督是怎样的人毫无头绪。
Well, we have these stories and we have the fact 我们拥有这些故事，也面对着这样一个事实
that men did not need many stories. I don’t suppose Chaucer ever thought of inventing a story. I don’t think people were less inventive in those days than they are today. I think they felt that the new shadings brought into the story-the fine shadings brought into it-were enough. Besides, it made things easier for the poet. His hearers or his readers knew what he was going to say. And so they could take in all the differences. 人们并不需要太多故事。我想乔叟从未考虑过要编造一个故事。我并不认为那个时代的人们比现今缺乏创造力。我认为他们觉得为故事注入新的微妙变化——那些精妙的细微差别——就已足够。此外，这也让诗人更轻松。他的听众或读者知道他要讲述什么，因此他们能领会所有的差异之处。
Now, in the epic-and we might think of the Gospels as a kind of divine epic-all things could be found. But poetry, as I said, has fallen asunder; or rather, on the one hand we have the lyrical poem and the elegy, and on the other we have the telling of a tale-we have the novel. One is almost tempted to think of the novel as a degeneration of the epic, in spite of such writers as Joseph Conrad or Herman Melville. For the novel goes back to the dignity of the epic. 如今在史诗中——我们或许可以把福音书视为某种神圣史诗——可以找到一切。但正如我所说，诗歌已经分崩离析；更准确地说，一方面我们有抒情诗和挽歌，另一方面我们有故事的讲述——我们有小说。尽管有约瑟夫·康拉德或赫尔曼·梅尔维尔这样的作家，人们几乎忍不住认为小说是史诗的退化形式。因为小说回溯了史诗的尊严。
If we think of the novel and the epic, we are tempted to fall into thinking that the chief difference lies in the difference between verse and prose, in the difference between singing something and stating something. But I think there is a greater difference. The difference lies in the fact that the important thing 若将小说与史诗相较，我们常会误以为二者主要区别在于韵文与散文之分，在于吟唱与叙述之别。但我认为存在更本质的差异——其差异在于
about the epic is a hero-a man who is a pattern for all men. While, as Mencken pointed out, the essence of most novels lies in the breaking down of a man, in the degeneration of character. 史诗的核心是英雄，是众生楷模；而正如门肯所言，多数小说的精髓却在于人的崩解，在于品格的堕落。
This brings us to another question: What do we think of happiness? What do we think of defeat, and of victory? Nowadays when people talk of a happy ending, they think of it as a mere pandering to the public, or they think it is a commercial device; they think of it as artificial. Yet for centuries men could very sincerely believe in happiness and in victory, though they felt the essential dignity of defeat. For example, when people wrote about the Golden Fleece (one of the ancient stories of mankind), readers and hearers were made to feel from the beginning that the treasure would be found at the end. 这引出了另一个问题：我们如何看待幸福？如何看待失败与胜利？如今人们谈及圆满结局，往往视之为迎合大众或商业伎俩，认为其矫揉造作。然而千百年来，人们曾真诚信仰幸福与胜利，同时亦能体会失败的内在尊严。譬如当人们书写金羊毛（人类最古老的故事之一）时，读者与听者从一开始便能确信：宝藏终将被寻获。
Well, nowadays if an adventure is attempted, we know that it will end in failure. When we read-I think of an example I admire-The Aspern Papers, ^(8){ }^{8} we know that the papers will never be found. When we read Franz Kafka’s The Castle, we know that the man will never get inside the castle. That is to say, we cannot really believe in happiness and in success. And this may be one of the poverties of our time. I suppose Kafka felt much the same when he wanted his books 如今，若有人尝试冒险，我们便知道终将以失败告终。当我们阅读——我想起一个令我钦佩的例子——《阿斯彭文件》时，我们明白那些文件永远不会被找到。当我们阅读卡夫卡的《城堡》时，我们清楚那个人永远无法进入城堡。也就是说，我们已无法真正相信幸福与成功。这或许正是我们时代的某种贫瘠。我想卡夫卡在要求销毁自己著作时
to be destroyed: he really wanted to write a happy and victorious book, and he felt that he could not do it. He might have written it, of course, but people would have felt that he was not telling the truth. Not the truth of facts but the truth of his dreams. 也怀着相似感受：他真正渴望写出一部幸福凯旋之作，却感到力不从心。当然，他本可以写出这样的作品，但人们会认为那并非真相——不是事实的真相，而是他梦想的真相。
At the end of the eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth century, let’s say (we need hardly go into a discussion of dates), man began to invent stories. Perhaps one might say that the attempt began with Hawthorne and with Edgar Allan Poe, but of course there are always forerunners. As Rubén Darío pointed out, nobody is the literary Adam. Still, it was Poe who wrote that a story should be written for the sake of the last sentence, and a poem for the sake of the last line. This degenerated into the trick story, and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries people have invented all kinds of plots. Those plots are sometimes very clever. Those plots, if merely told, are cleverer than the plots of the epics. Yet somehow we feel that there is something artificial about them-or rather, that there is something trivial about them. If we take two cases-let us suppose the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, then a novel or a film like Psycho-perhaps the plot of the second is cleverer, but we feel that there is more behind Stevenson’s plot. 在十八世纪末或十九世纪初（我们无需纠结具体年份），人类开始创作小说。或许可以说，这种尝试始于霍桑和爱伦·坡，当然先驱者总是存在的。正如鲁文·达里奥所言，文学领域没有谁是真正的亚当。但确实是爱伦·坡提出：短篇小说应当为最后一句而写，诗歌应当为最后一行而作。这种理念后来退化为技巧性故事，十九世纪和二十世纪的人们发明了各种情节设计。这些情节有时相当精巧——若仅就情节而言，甚至比史诗的布局更为巧妙。然而我们总觉得其中透着造作，或者说，透着几分轻浮。试举两例：假设《化身博士》的故事与《惊魂记》这类小说或电影相比，后者的情节或许更为精巧，但我们能感受到史蒂文森的故事背后蕴含着更深层的东西。
Regarding the idea I spoke about at the beginning, the idea about there being only a few plots: perhaps we should mention those books where the interest lies not in the plot but in the shifting, in the changing, of many plots. I am thinking of the Arabian Nights, of Orlando Furioso, and so on. One might also add the idea of an evil treasure. We get that in the Völsunga Saga, ^(9){ }^{9} and perhaps at the end of Beowulf-the idea of a treasure bringing evil to the people who find it. Here we may come to the idea I tried to work out in my last lecture, on metaphor-the idea that perhaps all plots belong to only a few patterns. Of course, nowadays people are inventing so many plots that we are blinded by them. But perhaps this fit of inventiveness may flicker, and then we may find that those many plots are but appearances of a few essential plots. This, however, is not for me to discuss. 关于我最初提到的那个观点——即世间仅有少数几种情节模式的观点——或许我们应当提及那些不以单一情节取胜，而在于多重情节交织变幻的作品。我想到《一千零一夜》，想到《疯狂的罗兰》等等。或许还可以加上"诅咒宝藏"的母题，比如在《沃尔松格传说》中，又或许在《贝奥武夫》的结尾——那种会给发现者带来厄运的宝藏。这或许能引向我在上一讲关于隐喻的探讨中试图阐明的观点：或许所有情节归根结底都归属于少数几种原型模式。当然，如今人们创造了如此繁多的情节，令人眼花缭乱。但或许这种创作热潮终将消退，届时我们或许会发现，那万千情节不过是少数核心模式的表象。不过这个议题不该由我来定论。
There is another fact to be noticed: poets seem to forget that, at one time, the telling of a tale was essential, and the telling of the tale and the uttering of the verse were not thought of as different things. A man told a tale; he sang it; and his hearers did not think of him as a man attempting two tasks, but rather as a man attempting one task that had two sides to it. Or perhaps they did not feel that there were two sides to 还有一点值得注意：诗人们似乎忘记了，在某个时期，讲述故事是至关重要的，而讲述故事与吟诵诗句并不被视为截然不同的事情。一个人讲述故事；他歌唱故事；听众们并不认为他在尝试完成两项任务，而是将其视为一项具有双重面向的使命。或许他们甚至感觉不到这种双重性，
it, but rather thought of the whole thing as one essential thing. 而是将整个过程视为一个浑然天成的整体。
We come now to our own time, and we find this very strange circumstance: we have had two world wars, yet somehow no epic has come from them-except perhaps the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. ^(10){ }^{10} In the Seven Pillars of Wisdom I find many epic qualities. But the book is hampered by the fact that the hero is the teller, and so sometimes he has to belittle himself, he has to make himself human, he has to make himself far too believable. In fact, he has to fall into the trickery of a novelist. 如今我们来到这个时代，却发现一个奇特现象：我们经历了两次世界大战，却几乎没有产生与之相称的史诗——或许《智慧七柱》是个例外。 ^(10){ }^{10} 我在《智慧七柱》中发现了诸多史诗特质。但这本书受限于一个事实：讲述者即是英雄本人，因此有时他不得不刻意弱化自己，不得不展现人性的一面，不得不让自己显得过于真实可信。实际上，他不得不陷入小说家惯用的叙事诡计之中。
There is another book, quite forgotten now, which I read, I think, in 1915-a novel called LeFeuL e F e u, by Henri Barbusse. ^(11){ }^{11} The author was a pacifist; it was a book written against war. Yet somehow epic thrust itself through the book (I remember a very fine bayonet charge in it). Another writer who had the epic sense was Kipling. We get this in such a wonderful story as “A Sahib’s War.” But in the same way that Kipling never attempted the sonnet, because he thought that this might estrange him from his readers, he never attempted the epic, though he might have done it. I am also reminded of Chesterton, who wrote “The Ballad of the White Horse,” a poem about King Alfred’s 还有一本如今已被遗忘的书，我大约在 1915 年读过——那是亨利·巴比塞所著的小说《火线》。作者是位和平主义者；这是本反战作品。然而史诗气质却莫名贯穿全书（我至今记得书中一段精彩的刺刀冲锋描写）。另一位具有史诗感的作家是吉卜林。我们在《一位绅士的战争》等精彩故事中能感受到这种特质。但正如吉卜林从不尝试写十四行诗——他认为那会使读者疏远——尽管他有能力创作史诗，却也从未涉足。这让我想起切斯特顿，他写过关于阿尔弗雷德大帝的叙事诗《白马谣》，
wars with the Danes. Therein we find very strange metaphors (I wonder how I forgot to quote them last time!)—for example, “marble like solid moonlight,” “gold like frozen fire,” where marble and gold are compared to two things that are even more elementtary. ^(12){ }^{12} They are compared to moonlight and to fire-and not to fire itself, but to a magic frozen fire. 与丹麦人的战争。其中我们发现了非常奇特的隐喻（奇怪我上次竟忘了引用！）——例如"大理石如凝固的月光"，"黄金似冻结的火焰"，这里大理石与黄金被比作两种更为本质的事物。它们被比作月光与火焰——而且并非普通的火焰，而是被魔法冻结的火焰。
In a way, people are hungering and thirsting for epic. I feel that epic is one of the things that men need. Of all places (and this may come as a kind of anticlimax, but the fact is there), it has been Hollywood that has furnished epic to the world. All over the globe, when people see a Western-beholding the mythology of a rider, and the desert, and justice, and the sheriff, and the shooting, and so on-I think they get the epic feeling from it, whether they know it or not. After all, knowing the thing is not important. 从某种意义上说，人们正渴望着史诗。我认为史诗是人类必需的精神食粮。尽管听起来可能有些扫兴（但事实确实如此），在众多领域中，恰恰是好莱坞为世界提供了史诗。当全球观众观看西部片时——那些关于骑手、荒漠、正义、警长与枪战的传奇故事——无论他们是否意识到，我想他们都能从中感受到史诗气质。毕竟，认知与否并不重要。
Now, I do not want to prophesy, because such things are dangerous (though they may come true in the long run), but I think that if the telling of a tale and the singing of a verse could come together again, then a very important thing might happen. Perhaps this will come from America-since, as you all know, America has an ethical sense of a thing being right or wrong. It may be felt in other countries, but I do not 此刻我不愿做出预言（尽管长远来看预言可能成真，但这终究是危险的事），但我认为若叙事艺术与诗歌吟唱能再度融合，或许将催生某种极其重要的事物。这种可能性或许会源自美国——因为众所周知，美国人对是非对错有着强烈的道德判断。其他国家或许也能感知到这一点，但我...
think it can be found in such an obvious way as I find it here. If this could be achieved, if we could go back to the epic, then something very great would have been accomplished. When Chesterton wrote “The Ballad of the White Horse,” it got good reviews and so on, but readers did not take kindly to it. In fact, when we think of Chesterton, we think of the Father Brown saga and not of that poem. 我认为它不可能以如此显而易见的方式被发现，就像我在这里找到的那样。倘若真能实现，倘若我们能回归史诗传统，那将是极其伟大的成就。当切斯特顿写下《白马民谣》时，尽管获得好评如潮，读者却并不买账。事实上，提起切斯特顿，人们想到的是布朗神父探案系列，而非那首长诗。
I have been thinking about the subject only rather late in life; and besides, I do not think I could attempt the epic (though I might have worked in two or three lines of epic). This is for younger men to do. And I hope they will do it, because of course we all feel that the novel is somehow breaking down. Think of the chief novels of our time-say, Joyce’s Ulysses. We are told thousands of things about the two characters, yet we do not know them. We have a better knowledge of characters in Dante or Shakespeare, who come to us-who live and die-in a few sentences. We do not know thousands of circumstances about them, but we know them intimately. That, of course, is far more important. 我对这个主题的思考始于人生较晚的阶段；况且，我自认无力尝试史诗创作（尽管或许能写出两三行史诗般的诗句）。这该由更年轻的人来完成。我衷心期待他们能做到，因为我们都能感觉到小说这种形式正在逐渐瓦解。想想我们这个时代的重要小说——比如乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》。书中对两位主角事无巨细的描写多达数千处，可我们依然不了解他们。相比之下，但丁或莎士比亚笔下的人物——那些用寥寥数语就完成生死演绎的角色——反而让我们了解得更透彻。我们不知道关于他们的无数细节，却能深入他们的灵魂。这显然重要得多。
I think that the novel is breaking down. I think that all those very daring and interesting experiments with the novel-for example, the idea of shifting time, the 我认为小说正在解体。那些对小说进行的大胆而有趣的实验——比如时间跳跃的概念、
idea of the story being told by different charac-ters-all those are leading to the moment when we shall feel that the novel is no longer with us. 故事由不同角色讲述的构想——所有这些都导向一个时刻，我们将感觉小说已不再与我们同在。
But there is something about a tale, a story, that will be always going on. I do not believe men will ever tire of telling or hearing stories. And if along with the pleasure of being told a story we get the additional pleasure of the dignity of verse, then something great will have happened. Maybe I am an old-fashioned man from the nineteenth century, but I have optimism, I have hope; and as the future holds many things-as the future, perhaps, holds all things-I think the epic will come back to us. I believe that the poet shall once again be a maker. I mean, he will tell a story and he will also sing it. And we will not think of those two things as different, even as we do not think they are different in Homer or in Virgil. 然而故事有一种永恒的特质。我不认为人们会厌倦讲述或聆听故事。如果在享受故事带来的愉悦之外，还能领略诗体赋予的庄严之美，那将是无比珍贵的馈赠。或许我是个来自十九世纪的老派人物，但我心怀乐观与希冀；既然未来蕴藏无限可能——或许未来包容万物——我相信史诗终将回归。我确信诗人将再度成为创造者。我的意思是，他将讲述故事，同时吟唱故事。我们不会将这两种行为割裂看待，正如我们从不认为荷马或维吉尔的作品中存在这种割裂。
WORD-MUSIC 词之乐AND 与TRANSLATION 翻译
For the sake of clarity, I shall confine myself now to the problem of verse translation. A minor problem but also a very relevant one. This discussion should pave us a way to the topic of word-music (or perhaps word-magic), of sense and sound in poetry. 为了阐述清晰，我将专注于诗歌翻译这一课题。虽是小问题，却至关重要。这番探讨将为我们铺就通往诗歌中文字音乐（或可称文字魔力）、意义与音韵之奥秘的道路。
According to a widely held superstition, all translations betray their matchless originals. This is expressed by the too-well-known Italian pun, “Traduttore, traditore,” which is supposed to be unanswerable. Since this pun is very popular, there must be a kernel of truth, a core of truth, hidden somewhere in it. 流传甚广的迷信认为，所有译作都背叛了其无与伦比的原作。这种观念通过那句耳熟能详的意大利双关语"Traduttore, traditore"（译者即逆者）得以表达，似乎成了无可辩驳的定论。既然这个双关语如此盛行，其中必然隐藏着某种真理的内核。
We will go into a discussion of the possibilities (or otherwise) and the success (or otherwise) of verse translation. According to my habit, we will begin with 我们将探讨诗歌翻译的可能性（或不可能性）及其成败得失。依照我的习惯，我们首先从
a few examples, for I do not think that any discussion can be carried on without examples. Since my memory is sometimes quite akin to oblivion, I should choose brief examples. It would be beyond our time and my capacity to analyze whole stanzas or poems. 几个例子开始，因为我认为任何讨论都离不开实例。鉴于我的记忆力有时近乎空白，我会选择简短的例子。若要分析完整的诗节或整首诗，恐怕会超出我们的时间范围和我的能力所限。
We will begin with the Ode of Brunanburh and Tennyson’s translation of it. This ode (my dates are always rather shaky) was composed at the beginning of the tenth century to celebrate the victory of the Wessex men against the Dublin Vikings, the Scotsmen, and the Welsh. Let us go into the examination of a line or so. In the original, we find something that runs more or less like this: “sunne up æt morgentid mære tungol.” That is to say, “the sun at morning-tide” or “at morning-time,” and then “that famous star” or “that mighty star”-but here “famous” would be a better translation (“mære tungol”). The poet goes on to speak of the sun as “godes candel beorht”-“a bright candle of God.” 让我们从《布鲁南堡颂》及丁尼生对其的翻译开始。这首颂诗（我的年代记忆总是不太可靠）创作于十世纪初，用以纪念威塞克斯人对都柏林维京人、苏格兰人和威尔士人取得的胜利。现在我们来考察其中的一两行诗句。原文中有一句大致是这样的："sunne up æt morgentid mære tungol"，意思是"晨光中的太阳"或"清晨时分"，接着是"那颗著名的星辰"或"那颗强大的星辰"——不过此处"著名的"（"mære tungol"）会是更贴切的译法。诗人继续将太阳描述为"godes candel beorht"——"上帝明亮的烛火"。
This ode was done into English prose by Tennyson’s son; it was published in a magazine. ^(1){ }^{1} The son probably explained to his father some essentials of the rules of Old English verse-about its beat, its use of alliteration instead of rhyme, and so on. Then Tennyson, who was very fond of experiments, tried his 这首颂诗由丁尼生之子译成英文散文体，发表于某杂志。 ^(1){ }^{1} 儿子或许向父亲解释了古英语诗歌的基本规则——关于其韵律、使用头韵而非押韵等要点。随后热衷实验的丁尼生便尝试用现代英语创作古英语体诗歌。值得注意的是，尽管这次尝试相当成功，他却再未重拾这种形式。因此若要在阿尔弗雷德·丁尼生勋爵的作品中寻找古英语体诗作，我们只能满足于《布鲁南堡战役颂》这一杰出孤例。
hand at writing Old English verse in modern English. It is noteworthy to remark that, although the experiment was quite successful, he never came back to it again. So if we were looking for Old English verse in Lord Alfred Tennyson’s works, we would have to be content with that one outstanding example, the Ode of Brunanburh. （注：根据翻译规则，保留原文标记@0#；"Lord Alfred Tennyson"作为专有名词保留原称谓；"Ode of Brunanburh"采用学界通用译名《布鲁南堡战役颂》）
Those two fragments-“the sun, that famous star” and “the sun, the bright candle of God” (“godes candel beorht”)-came to be translated by Tennyson thus: “when first the great / Sun-star of morningtide.” ^(2){ }^{2} Now, “sun-star of morning-tide” is, I think, a very striking translation. It is even more Saxon than the original, since we have two compound Germanic words: “sun-star” and “morning-tide.” And of course, though “morning-tide” can be easily explained as “morning-time,” we may also think that Tennyson wanted to suggest to us the image of the dawn as overflowing the sky. So what we have is a very strange phrase: “when first the great / Sun-star of morning-tide.” And then a line later, when Tennyson comes to the “bright candle of God,” he translates it as “Lamp of the Lord God.” 那两段诗句——“太阳，那颗著名的星辰”与“太阳，上帝明亮的烛火”（古英语原文为“godes candel beorht”）——被丁尼生译为：“当伟大的晨潮太阳星首度升起。” ^(2){ }^{2} 我认为“晨潮太阳星”这个译法极具冲击力。它甚至比古英语原文更具撒克逊风格，因为其中包含两个日耳曼语复合词：“太阳星”与“晨潮”。当然，虽然“晨潮”可以简单解释为“晨时”，但我们或许也能感受到丁尼生试图向我们传递黎明如潮水漫过天际的意象。因此这个译句显得尤为独特：“当伟大的晨潮太阳星首度升起。”而在后一行诗中，当丁尼生处理“上帝明亮的烛火”时，他将其译为“上主之灯”。
Let us now take another example, not only a blameless but also a fine translation. This time we will 现在让我们看另一个例子，这不仅是无可指摘的翻译，更是精妙的译作。这次我们将
consider a translation from the Spanish. It is the wonderful poem “Noche oscura del alma,” “Dark Night of the Soul,” written in the sixteenth century by one of the greatest-we may safely say the greatest-of Spanish poets, of all men who have used the Spanish language for the purposes of poetry. I am speaking, of course, of San Juan de la Cruz. The first stanza runs thus: 试举一例西班牙语译诗。那是十六世纪由最伟大的西班牙诗人——我们大可以断言，他是运用西班牙语进行诗歌创作的所有诗人中最杰出的一位——圣胡安·德拉·克鲁斯所写的绝妙诗篇《灵魂的暗夜》。其首节如是：
En una noche oscura con ansias en amores inflamada ¡o dichosa ventura! salí sin ser notada estando ya mi casa sosegada. ^(3)^{3} 在充满爱之渴盼的暗夜中
啊，何等幸福的际遇！
我悄然离去
当我的宅邸已归于静寂。 ^(3)^{3}
This is a wonderful stanza. But if we consider the last line torn from its context and taken by itself (to be sure, we are not allowed to do that), it is an undistinguished line: “estando ya mi casa sosegada,” “when my house was quiet.” We have the rather hissing sound of the three s’s in “casa sosegada.” And “sosegada” is hardly a striking word. I am not trying to disparage the text. I am merely pointing out (and in a short time you will see why I am doing this) that the line taken by itself, torn from its context, is quite unremarkable. 这节诗精妙绝伦。但若我们将最后一行抽离语境单独审视（当然，这种做法本不应被允许），它便显得平淡无奇："当我的宅邸已归于静寂"。三个嘶音"s"在"casa sosegada（静寂的宅邸）"中略显刺耳，且"sosegada（静寂）"也并非惊艳之词。我并非要贬低原文，只是想指出（稍后诸位自会明白我的用意）——这行诗一旦脱离上下文，便毫无出彩之处。
This poem was translated into English by Arthur Symons at the end of the nineteenth century. The translation is not a good one, but if you care to look at it, you can find it in Yeats’s Oxford Book of Modern Verse. ^(4){ }^{4} Some years ago a great Scottish poet who is also a South African, Roy Campbell, attempted a translation of “Dark Night of the Soul.” I wish I had the book by me; but we will confine ourselves to the line I have just quoted, “estando ya mi casa sosegada,” and we will see what Roy Campbell made of it. He translated it thus: “When all the house was hushed.” ^(5){ }^{5} Here we have the word “all,” which gives a sense of space, a sense of vastness, to the line. And then the beautiful, the lovely English word “hushed.” “Hushed” seems to give us somehow the very music of silence. 这首诗由阿瑟·西蒙斯在十九世纪末译成英文。译本并不出色，但若你有兴趣查阅，可以在叶芝主编的《牛津现代诗选》中找到。 ^(4){ }^{4} 几年前，一位伟大的苏格兰诗人——同时也是南非人的罗伊·坎贝尔，曾尝试翻译《灵魂的黑夜》。真希望此刻手边有这本书；不过我们且专注于我刚引用的那句"estando ya mi casa sosegada"，看看罗伊·坎贝尔是如何处理的。他将其译为："当整座房屋归于静寂。" ^(5){ }^{5} 这里用了"整座"一词，为诗句赋予了空间感和辽阔感。而后是那个美妙绝伦的英文词"静寂"。"静寂"一词似乎以某种方式为我们呈现了沉默本身的韵律。
I will add to these two very favorable examples of the art of translation a third one. This I will not discuss, since it is a case not of verse rendered into verse but rather of prose being lifted up into verse, into poetry. We have that common Latin tag (done from the Greek, of course), “Ars longa, vita brevis”-or, as I suppose we ought to pronounce it, “wita brewis.” (This is certainly very ugly. Let us go back to “vita brevis”-to “Virgil” and not to “Wirgilius.”) Here we have a plain 除了这两个翻译艺术的绝佳范例，我还要举出第三个例子。这个例子我不打算详加讨论，因为它并非韵文转韵文的翻译，而是将散文升华成了诗行。我们熟知的拉丁格言（当然源自希腊语）"Ars longa, vita brevis"——或者按我认为该读作"wita brewis"（这发音实在刺耳，还是让我们回归"vita brevis"的读法吧，就像读"Virgil"而非"Wirgilius"）。此处我们看到一个朴素的
statement, a statement of opinion. This is quite plain sailing; this is straightforward. It strikes no deep chord. In fact, it is a kind of prophecy of the telegram and of the literature evolved by it. “Art is long, life is short.” This tag was repeated ever so many times. Then, in the fourteenth century, “un grand translateur,” “a great translator”-Master Geoffrey Chau-cer-needed that line. Of course, he wasn’t thinking about medicine; he was thinking perhaps about poetry. But perhaps (I don’t have the text with me, so we can choose), perhaps he was thinking of love and wanted to work in that line. He wrote: “The life so short, the craft so long to learn”-or, as you may suppose he pronounced it, “The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.” ^(7){ }^{7} Here we get not only the statement but also the very music of wistfulness. We can see that the poet is not merely thinking of the arduous art and of the brevity of life; he is also feeling it. This is given by the apparently invisible, inaudible keyword-the word “so.” “The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.” 陈述，一种观点的陈述。这相当直白；这很简单。它并未触动深层心弦。事实上，这是对电报及其衍生文学的一种预言。"艺术长存，生命短暂。"这句套话被重复了无数次。到了十四世纪，"一位伟大的翻译家"——乔叟大师——需要用到这行诗句。当然，他并非在思考医学；他或许是在思索诗歌。但也可能（我手头没有原文，所以我们可以推测），他或许在思考爱情，并想融入这行诗。他写道："生命如此短暂，技艺如此漫长"——或者如你所想他当时的发音："The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne。" ^(7){ }^{7} 在此我们不仅获得了陈述，更捕捉到了惆怅的韵律。可以看出诗人不仅思考着艰辛的艺术与生命的短暂；他同时也在感受着。这种感受通过那个看似无形无声的关键词——"so"（如此）——传递出来。"The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne。"
Let us go back to the first two examples: the famous Ode of Brunanburh and Tennyson, and the “Noche oscura del alma” of San Juan de la Cruz. If we consider the two translations I have quoted, they are not inferior to the original, yet we feel that there is 让我们回到最初的两个例子：著名的《布鲁南堡颂》与丁尼生的作品，以及圣胡安·德拉·克鲁兹的《灵魂的黑夜》。如果我们审视我所引用的两种译本，它们并不逊色于原作，然而我们仍能感觉到其中存在着
a difference. The difference is beyond what the translator can do; it depends, rather, on the way we read poetry. For if we look back on the Ode of Brunanburh, we know that it came from deep emotion. We know that the Saxons had been beaten many times over by the Danes, and that they hated this. And we must think of the joy the West Saxons felt when, after a long day’s struggle-the battle of Brunanburh, one of the greatest battles in the medieval history of Eng-land-they defeated Olaf, the king of the Dublin Vikings, and the hated Scotsmen and Welshmen. We think of what they felt; we think of the man who wrote the ode. Perhaps he was a monk. But the fact remains that instead of thanking God (in the orthodox fashion), he thanked the sword of his king and the sword of Prince Edmund for the victory. He does not say that God vouchsafed the victory to them; he says that they won it “swordda edgiou”-“by the edge of their swords.” The whole poem is filled with a fierce, ruthless joy. He mocks those who have been defeated. He is very happy that they have been defeated. He talks of the king and his brother going back to their own Wessex-to their own “WestSaxonland,” as Tennyson has it (each “went to his own West-Saxonland, glad of the war”). ^(8){ }^{8} After that, 一种差异。这种差异超越了译者所能处理的范畴，而更多取决于我们阅读诗歌的方式。回顾《布鲁南堡之役颂》，我们知道它源自深沉的情感。撒克逊人曾屡遭丹麦人击败，他们对此深恶痛绝。我们必须想象西撒克逊人经终日鏖战——这场布鲁南堡战役是英格兰中世纪史上最伟大的战役之一——最终击败都柏林维京人国王奥拉夫，以及他们憎恶的苏格兰人与威尔士人时，内心涌动的狂喜。我们揣度着他们的感受，想象那位颂诗作者的心境。或许他是位修士。但事实是，他并未以正统方式感谢上帝，而是将胜利归功于国王与埃德蒙王子的利剑。他并未宣称上帝赐予他们胜利，而是说他们"swordda edgiou"——"凭剑锋之利"赢得胜利。整首诗洋溢着凶猛无情的欢欣。他嘲笑着败军之众，为他们的溃败而欣喜若狂。 他谈到国王和他的兄弟返回他们自己的威塞克斯——回到丁尼生笔下的"西撒克逊人的土地"（"各自回到自己的西撒克逊故土，为战争结束而欢欣"）。 ^(8){ }^{8} 此后，
he goes far back into English history; he thinks of the men who came over from Jutland, of Hengist and Horsa. ^(9){ }^{9} This is very strange-I do not suppose many men had that historical sense in the Middle Ages. So we have to think of the poem as coming out of deep emotion. We have to think of it as an onrush of great verse. 他将思绪回溯至英格兰历史的深处；想起那些从日德兰半岛渡海而来的亨吉斯特和霍萨兄弟。 ^(9){ }^{9} 这非常奇特——我不认为中世纪有多少人具备这种历史感。因此我们必须将这首诗视为深厚情感的迸发，看作伟大诗行的奔涌激荡。
When we come to Tennyson’s version, much as we may admire it (and I knew it before I knew the Saxon original), we think of it as a successful experiment in Old English verse wrought by a master of modern English verse; that is to say, the context is different. Of course, the translator is not to be blamed for this. The same thing happens in the case of San Juan de la Cruz and Roy Campbell: we may think (as I suppose we are allowed to think) that “when all the house was hushed” is verbally-from the point of view of mere literature-superior to “estando ya mi casa sosegada.” But that is of no avail as regards our judgment of the two pieces, the Spanish original and the English rendering. In the first case, San Juan de la Cruz, we think that he reached the highest experience of which the soul of a man is capable-the experience of ecstasies, the blending together of a human soul with the soul of divinity, with the soul of the godhead, of God. After 当我们读到丁尼生的译本时，尽管对其推崇备至（我接触这个译本还在接触古英语原作之前），我们仍将其视为现代英语诗坛巨匠对古英语诗歌的一次成功实验；也就是说，语境已然不同。当然，这不能归咎于译者。圣十字若望与罗伊·坎贝尔的案例同样如此：我们或许认为（我想我们有权利这样认为）"当整座宅邸归于沉寂"在文字层面——仅从纯文学角度而言——要优于"estando ya mi casa sosegada"。但这无助于我们对两个文本的判断，即西班牙语原作与英语译作。就前者而言，圣十字若望，我们认为他抵达了人类灵魂所能企及的至高体验——那种狂喜的体验，人类灵魂与神性灵魂、与上帝神格的交融。
he had had that unutterable experience, he had to communicate it somehow in metaphors. Then he found ready to hand the “Song of Songs,” and he took (many mystics have done this) he took the image of sexual love as an image for mystical union between man and his god, and he wrote the poem. Thus, we are hearing-we are overhearing, we may say, as in the case of the Saxon-the very words that he uttered. 他经历了那种难以言喻的体验后，必须通过某种隐喻将其传达出来。于是他找到了现成的《雅歌》，并借鉴（许多神秘主义者都这样做）男女之爱的意象，来象征人与神之间的神秘结合，从而创作了这首诗。因此，我们听到的——不妨说是无意间听到的，就像撒克逊人的例子那样——正是他亲口吟诵的诗句。
Then we come to Roy Campbell’s translation. We find it good, but we are perhaps apt to think, “Well, the Scotsman made, after all, quite a good job of it.” This, of course, is different. That is to say, the difference between a translation and the original is not a difference in the texts themselves. I suppose if we did not know which was the original and which was the translation, we could judge them fairly. But, unhappily, we cannot do this. And so the translator’s work is always supposed to be inferior-or, what is worse, is felt to be inferior-even though, verbally, the rendering may be as good as the text. 接着我们来看罗伊·坎贝尔的译本。虽然觉得译得不错，但人们往往会想："说到底，这个苏格兰人处理得还挺好。"这当然有所不同。也就是说，译本与原作的差异并非文本本身的差异。我想，若我们不知道孰为原作孰为译本，本可作出公允评判。但遗憾的是我们无法做到。因此译者的作品总被认为低人一等——或更糟的是，即便字面翻译可能与原文同样出色，人们仍感觉它逊色于原作。
Now we come to another problem: the problem of literal translation. When I speak of “literal” translations, I am using a wide metaphor, since, if a translation cannot be true word for word to the original, it can still less be true letter for letter. In the nineteenth 现在我们面临另一个问题：直译的问题。当我谈到"直译"时，我是在使用一个宽泛的比喻，因为如果翻译无法做到逐词忠实于原文，那就更不可能做到逐字母忠实了。在十九世纪
century, a quite forgotten Greek scholar, Newman, attempted a literal hexameter translation of Homer. ^(10){ }^{10} It was his purpose to publish a translation “against” Pope’s Homer. He used phrases such as “wet waves,” “wine-dark sea,” and so on. Now, Matthew Arnold had his own theories on translating Homer. When Mr. Newman’s book came out, he reviewed it. Newman answered him; Matthew Arnold answered him back. We can read that very lively and very intelligent discussion in the essays of Matthew Arnold. 世纪时，一位几乎被遗忘的希腊学者纽曼尝试用六音步诗体直译荷马史诗。 ^(10){ }^{10} 他旨在出版一部"对抗"蒲柏所译荷马史诗的译本，使用了"湿漉漉的浪花"、"酒色深沉的大海"等表述。当时马修·阿诺德自有一套荷马翻译理论，当纽曼的译本问世后，他撰写了评论。纽曼予以回应，马修·阿诺德又再次反驳。我们可以在马修·阿诺德的散文中读到这场精彩绝伦的智慧交锋。
Both men had much to say on the two sides of the question. Newman supposed that literal translation was the most faithful one. Matthew Arnold began with a theory about Homer. He said that in Homer several qualities were to be found-clarity, nobility, simplicity, and so on. He thought that a translator should always convey the impression of those qualities, even when the text did not bear them out. Matthew Arnold pointed out that a literal translation made for oddity and for uncouthness. 双方在这个问题的两个对立面上都提出了深刻见解。纽曼认为直译才是最忠实的译法。马修·阿诺德则从荷马的特质理论出发，指出荷马史诗具备清晰、崇高、质朴等特质。他认为译者应当始终传递这些特质的韵味，即便原文并未明确体现。马修·阿诺德指出，直译会导致行文怪异而生硬。
For example, in the Romance languages we do not say “It is cold”-we say “It makes cold”: “Il fait froid,” “Fa freddo,” “Hace frío,” and so on. Yet I don’t think anybody should translate “Il fait froid” by “It makes cold.” Another example: in English one 例如，在罗曼语系中我们不说"天气冷"——我们说"制造寒冷"："Il fait froid"、"Fa freddo"、"Hace frío"等等。但我认为任何人都不该把"Il fait froid"译作"它制造寒冷"。另一个例子：英语里人们
says “Good morning,” and in Spanish one says “Buenos días” (“Good days”). If “Good morning” were translated as “Buena mañana,” we should feel that this was a literal translation but hardly a true one. 说"早安"，而西班牙语说"Buenos días"（"美好的日子"）。若将"Good morning"直译为"Buena mañana"，我们会觉得这虽字面准确却难称真实。
Matthew Arnold pointed out that if a text be translated literally, then false emphases are created. I do not know whether he came across Captain Burton’s translation of the Arabian Nights; perhaps he did so too late. For Burton translates Quitab alif laila wa laila as Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, instead of Book of the Thousand and One Nights. This translation is a literal one. It is true word for word to the Arabic. Yet it is false in the sense that the words “book of the thousand nights and a night” are a common form in Arabic, while in English we have a slight shock of surprise. And this, of course, has not been intended by the original. 马修·阿诺德曾指出，若逐字翻译文本，就会产生错误的强调效果。不知他是否读过伯顿上校翻译的《天方夜谭》；或许读得太晚。因为伯顿将 Quitab alif laila wa laila 译作《千夜与一夜之书》，而非《一千零一夜》。这个翻译是字面对应的，每个词都忠实于阿拉伯语原文。但从另一层意义看却是失真的，因为"千夜与一夜之书"在阿拉伯语中是常见表达，译成英语却令人略感突兀——而这显然并非原著本意。
Matthew Arnold advised the translator of Homer to have a Bible at his elbow. He said that the Bible in English might be a kind of standard for a translation of Homer. Yet if Matthew Arnold had looked closely into his Bible, he might have seen that the English Bible is full of literal translations, and that part of the great beauty of the English Bible lies in those literal translations. 马修·阿诺德曾建议荷马史诗的译者手边备一本《圣经》。他说英文版《圣经》或许能成为翻译荷马的标准范本。然而倘若马修·阿诺德仔细研读过他的《圣经》，或许会发现英文版《圣经》充斥着直译的段落，而这部伟大经典的部分精妙之处恰恰蕴藏在这些直译之中。
For example, in the English Bible we have “a tower of strength.” This is the phrase translated, as supposed, by Luther as “ein feste Burg”-“a mighty (or a firm) stronghold.” Then we have “the song of songs.” I read in Fray Luis de León that the Hebrews had no superlatives, so they could not say “the highest song” or “the best song.” They said “the song of songs,” even as they might have said “the king of kings” for “the emperor” or “the highest king”; or “the moon of moons” for “the highest moon”; or “the night of nights” for the most hallowed of nights. If we compare the English rendering “song of songs” to the German by Luther, we see that Luther, who had no care for beauty, who merely wanted Germans to understand the text, translated it as “das hohe Lied,” “the high lay.” So we find that these two literal translations make for beauty. 例如，在英文圣经中有"a tower of strength"（力量之塔）这一表述。据信这是路德翻译的短语"ein feste Burg"——意为"一座坚固（或牢不可破）的堡垒"。还有"the song of songs"（歌中之歌）。我在路易斯·德·莱昂修士的著作中读到，希伯来人没有最高级形式，因此他们无法说"the highest song"（至高之歌）或"the best song"（至美之歌），只能说"the song of songs"（歌中之歌），就像他们用"the king of kings"（万王之王）表示"皇帝"或"至高君王"；用"the moon of moons"（月中之月）表示"至高之月"；或用"the night of nights"（夜中之夜）表示最神圣的夜晚。若将英文译本"歌中之歌"与路德的德文译本比较，我们会发现不讲究文辞之美、只求德国人理解经文的路德，将其译为"das hohe Lied"（崇高之歌）。由此可见，这两种直译方式都创造了美感。
In fact, it might be said that literal translations make not only, as Matthew Arnold pointed out, for uncouthness and oddity, but also for strangeness and beauty. This, I think, is felt by all of us; for if we look into a literal version of some outlandish poem, we expect something strange. If we do not find it, we feel somehow disappointed. 事实上可以说，直译不仅如马修·阿诺德所指出的会带来生硬与怪异，还能产生陌生感与美感。我想我们都有这种体会：当阅读某首异域诗歌的直译本时，我们期待感受到某种奇异特质。若未能发现这种特质，反而会感到失落。
Now we come to one of the finest and most famous 此刻我们来到最精妙且最负盛名的
English translations. I am speaking, of course, of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát by Omar Khayyám. ^(11){ }^{11} The first stanza runs thus: 英译作品之一。我指的当然是菲茨杰拉德翻译的欧玛尔·海亚姆《鲁拜集》。 ^(11){ }^{11} 开篇诗节如是写道：
Awake! For morning in the bowl of night Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight; And, lo! the hunter of the East has caught The Sultan’s turret in a daze of light. 醒来吧！晨曦已向黑夜的碗中投掷石块，惊散了满天星斗；看啊！东方的猎手已用眩目的光芒，擒住了苏丹的塔楼。
As we know, the book was discovered in a bookstore by Swinburne and Rossetti. They were overwhelmed by its beauty. They knew nothing whatsoever of Edward FitzGerald, a quite unknown man of letters. He had tried his hand at translating Calderón, and Farid al-Din Attar’s Parliament of Birds; these books were not too good. And then there came this famous book, now a classic. 众所周知，这本书是斯温伯恩和罗塞蒂在书店偶然发现的。他们被其文采深深震撼。当时他们对爱德华·菲茨杰拉德这位寂寂无名的文人一无所知。此人曾尝试翻译卡尔德隆的作品，以及法里德·阿尔丁·阿塔尔的《百鸟朝凤》，但均未臻佳境。而后却诞生了这部如今已成经典的名著。
Rossetti and Swinburne felt the beauty of the translation, yet we wonder if they would have felt this beauty had FitzGerald presented the Rubáiyát as an original (partly it was original) rather than as a translation. Would they think FitzGerald should have been allowed to say, “Awake! For morning in the bowl of night / Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight”? (The second line sends us to a footnote, which explains that to fling a stone into a bowl is the 罗塞蒂与斯温伯恩感受到了译作之美，但我们不禁怀疑，倘若菲茨杰拉德将《鲁拜集》作为原创作品（部分内容确属原创）而非译作呈现，他们是否还能体会这种美。他们会认为菲茨杰拉德有权写下"醒来吧！晨光已向夜的碗中/投进石子，惊散满天星斗"这样的诗句吗？（第二行让我们查阅了一条脚注，解释向碗中投石是——
sign for the departing of the caravan.) And I wonder if FitzGerald would have been allowed the “noose of light” and the “sultan’s turret” in a poem of his own. （为远行的商队送别的标志。）我在想，如果菲茨杰拉德在自己的诗中使用“光之套索”和“苏丹的塔楼”这样的意象，是否会得到允许。
But I think that we can safely dwell on a single line-a line which is to be found in one of the other stanzas: 但我认为我们可以安心地专注于单独一行——这行诗出自其他诗节中的某一节：
Dreaming when dawn’s left hand was in the sky I heard a voice within the tavern cry, “Awake my little ones, and fill the cup Before life’s liquor in its cup be dry.” 当黎明的左手还悬在天际，
我听见酒馆里传来一声呼喊：
“醒来吧，小家伙们，快斟满酒杯，
趁生命的美酒尚未枯干。”
Let us dwell on the first line: “Dreaming when dawn’s left hand was in the sky.” Of course, the keyword in this line is the word “left.” Had any other adjective been used, the line would have been meaningless. But “left hand” makes us think of something strange, of something sinister. We know that the right hand is associated with “right”-in other words with “righteousness,” with “direct,” and so on-while here we have the ominous word “left.” Let us remember the Spanish phrase “lanzada de modo izquierdo que atraviese el corazón,” (“launched leftwards to cross through the heart”)-the idea of something sinister. We feel that there is something subtly wrong about “dawn’s left hand.” If the Persian was dreaming when 让我们细细品味这第一行诗："当黎明的左手还在天际徘徊时，我正做着梦。"显然，这一行的关键词是"左"字。若换作其他形容词，这行诗便索然无味。但"左手"让我们联想到某种诡异不祥之物。我们知道右手常与"正确"相关联——即"正直"、"直接"等含义——而这里却用了不祥的"左"字。请记住西班牙谚语"向左刺出的长矛贯穿心脏"所暗示的凶兆。我们感受到"黎明的左手"中暗藏着某种微妙的不对劲。当那位波斯人梦见
dawn’s left hand was in the sky, then his dream could become a nightmare at any moment. And of this we are slightly aware; we don’t have to dwell on the word “left.” For the word “left” makes all the differ-ence-so delicate and so mysterious is the art of verse. We accept “Dreaming when dawn’s left hand was in the sky” because we suppose that there is a Persian original behind it. As far as I am aware, Omar Khayyám does not bear FitzGerald out. This brings us to an interesting problem: a literal translation has created a beauty all its own. 拂晓的左手悬于天际，他的梦境随时可能化作梦魇。对此我们隐约有所察觉；不必执着于"左"这个字眼。因为"左"字在此处产生了微妙而神秘的差异——诗歌艺术就是如此精妙。我们接受"当拂晓的左手悬于天际时入梦"这样的表达，是假定其背后存在波斯语原典。据我所知，欧玛尔·海亚姆的原文并未印证菲茨杰拉德这一译法。这引出一个耐人寻味的问题：直译有时能创造出独特的美感。
I have always wondered about the origin of literal translations. Nowadays we are fond of literal translations; in fact, many of us accept only literal translations, because we want to give every man his due. That would have seemed a crime to translators in ages past. They were thinking of something far worthier. They wanted to prove that the vernacular was as capable of a great poem as the original. And I suppose that Don Juan de Jáuregui when he rendered Lucan into Spanish, thought of that also. I don’t think any contemporary of Pope thought about Homer and Pope. I suppose that readers, the best readers anyhow, thought of the poem in itself. They were interested in the Iliad and in the Odyssey, and they had no 我一直对直译的起源感到好奇。如今我们推崇直译；事实上，许多人只接受直译，因为我们想要给予每个词应有的位置。但这在过去时代的译者眼中恐怕是种罪过。他们追求的是更崇高的目标——要证明方言俗语也能像原文一样成就伟大诗篇。我想当胡安·德·豪雷吉翻译卢坎作品时，怀抱的正是这种信念。蒲柏同时代的人读荷马史诗时，心中浮现的必是诗作本身而非译者之名。最好的读者们关注的是《伊利亚特》与《奥德赛》本身，而非
care for verbal trifles. All throughout the Middle Ages, people thought of translation not in terms of a literal rendering but in terms of something being re-created. Of a poet’s having read a work and then somehow evolving that work from himself, from his own might, from the possibilities hitherto known of his language. 字句的细枝末节。整个中世纪时期，人们从不将翻译视为逐字转换，而是看作一种再创造——诗人阅读原作后，凭借自身才情与母语的潜能，让作品获得新生。
How did literal translations begin? I do not think they came out of scholarship; I do not think they came out of scruples. I think they had a theological origin. For although people thought of Homer as the greatest of poets, still they knew that Homer was human (“quandoque dormitat bonus Homerus,” and so on), ^(12){ }^{12} and so they could reshape his words. But when it came to translating the Bible, that was something quite different, because the Bible was supposed to have been written by the Holy Ghost. If we think of the Holy Ghost, if we think of the infinite intelligence of God undertaking a literary task, then we are not allowed to think of any chance elements-of any haphazard ele-ments-in his work. No-if God writes a book, if God condescends to literature, then every word, every letter, as the Kabbalists said, must have been thought out. And it might be blasphemy to tamper with the text written by an endless, eternal intelligence. 直译是如何开始的？我不认为它源于学术研究，也不认为它出于道德顾虑。我认为它有着神学渊源。因为尽管人们将荷马视为最伟大的诗人，但他们也清楚荷马终究是凡人（"纵使杰出的荷马也有打盹时"云云）， ^(12){ }^{12} 因此可以重塑他的文字。但翻译《圣经》则截然不同，因为《圣经》被认为是圣灵所著。倘若我们想到圣灵，想到上帝那无限的智慧从事文学创作时，我们便不能容许其作品中有任何偶然因素——任何随意成分。不——如果上帝要写一本书，如果上帝屈尊从事文学创作，那么正如卡巴拉学者所言，每个词语、每个字母都必定经过深思熟虑。篡改由无限永恒之智慧写就的经文，或许就是亵渎神明。
Thus, I think the idea of a literal translation came from translations of the Bible. This is merely my guess (I suppose there are many scholars here who can correct me if I make a mistake), but I think it is highly probable. When very fine translations of the Bible were undertaken, men began to discover, began to feel, that there was a beauty in alien ways of expression. Now everybody is fond of literal translations because a literal translation always gives us those small jolts of surprise that we expect. In fact, it might be said that no original is needed. Perhaps a time will come when a translation will be considered as something in itself. We may think of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. 因此，我认为直译的理念源自《圣经》的翻译。这仅是我的猜测（想必在座有许多学者能纠正我的错误），但我认为可能性极高。当人们着手进行精妙的《圣经》译本时，他们开始发现、开始感受到异域表达方式中蕴含的美感。如今人人都钟爱直译，因为直译总能带来我们期待的那种微小而惊喜的触动。事实上，可以说原作已非必需。或许有朝一日，译本本身将被视为独立存在之物。我们不妨想想伊丽莎白·巴雷特·勃朗宁的《葡萄牙十四行诗》。
Sometimes I have attempted a rather bold metaphor, but have seen that no one would accept it if it came from me (I am a mere contemporary), and so I have attributed it to some out-of-the-way Persian or Norseman. Then my friends have said that it was quite fine; and of course I have never told them that I invented it, because I was fond of the metaphor. After all, the Persians or Norsemen may have invented that metaphor, or far better ones. 有时我尝试使用相当大胆的隐喻，但发现若出自我手（毕竟我只是个当代人）便无人接受，于是将其归功于某个冷门的波斯人或北欧先民。随后友人们便盛赞其精妙；而我自然从未告知他们这是我杜撰的，只因我偏爱那个隐喻。说到底，那些波斯人或北欧人或许真创造过这个隐喻——或更精彩的也未可知。
Thus, we go back to what I said at the beginning: that a translation is never judged verbally. It should be 这便回到了我最初的观点：翻译从来不是逐字评判的。它应当
judged verbally, but it never is. For example (and I hope you won’t think that I am uttering a blasphemy), I have looked very carefully (but that was forty years ago, and I can plead the mistakes of youth) into Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal and into Stefan George’s Blumen des Böse. I think that of course Baudelaire was a greater poet than Stefan George, but Stefan George was a far more skillful craftsman. I think that if we compare them line by line, we should find that Stefan George’s Umdichtung (this is a fine German word that means not a poem translated from another, but a poem woven around another; we also have Nachdichtung, an “after-poem,” a translation; and Übersetzung, a mere translation)—I think that Stefan George’s translation is perhaps better than Baudelaire’s book. But of course this will do Stefan George no good, since people who are interested in Baudelaire-and I have been very much interested in Baudelaire-think of his words as coming from him; that is to say, they think of the context of his whole life. While in the case of Stefan George we have an efficient but rather priggish twentiethcentury poet turning Baudelaire’s very words into an alien language, into German. 人们总是用言辞来评判诗歌，但诗歌本身却从不如此。举个例子（希望你们别觉得我在亵渎神明），我曾非常仔细地研读过波德莱尔的《恶之花》和斯特凡·格奥尔格的《恶之华》（那是四十年前的事了，年轻时的谬误还望见谅）。我认为波德莱尔当然是比格奥尔格更伟大的诗人，但格奥尔格在技艺上要精湛得多。若逐行对比，我们会发现格奥尔格的"Umdichtung"（这个精妙的德语词意指并非直接翻译，而是围绕原诗编织的新诗；另有"Nachdichtung"指仿作式翻译，而"Übersetzung"仅是普通翻译）——我认为格奥尔格的改写版或许比波德莱尔的原著更出色。但这当然无助于提升格奥尔格的地位，因为热爱波德莱尔的人（包括曾经痴迷波德莱尔的我）会认为那些词句只属于波德莱尔本人，即人们会联想到他整个生命的语境。而格奥尔格只是个高效却迂腐的二十世纪诗人，硬生生将波德莱尔的诗句移植到了异域语言——德语之中。
I have spoken of the present. I say that we are burdened, overburdened, by our historical sense. We 我已谈及当下。我认为我们被历史感所累，甚至不堪重负。
cannot look into an ancient text as the men of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance or even the eighteenth century did. Now we are worried by circumstances; we want to know exactly what Homer meant when he wrote about the “wine-dark sea” (if “wine-dark sea” be the right translation; I do not know). But if we are historically minded, I think we may perhaps suppose that a time will come when men will be no longer as aware of history as we are. A time will come when men shall care very little about the accidents and circumstances of beauty; they shall care for beauty itself. Perhaps they shall not even care about the names or the biographies of the poets. 我们已无法像中世纪、文艺复兴时期乃至十八世纪的人们那样阅读古籍。如今我们被各种背景所困扰；我们想确切知道荷马写下"酒色海洋"时究竟是何意（如果"酒色海洋"这个译法正确的话——我不得而知）。但若我们具备历史意识，我想或许可以预见这样一个时代：那时的人们将不再像我们这般关注历史。终将有一天，人们不再在意美的偶然与背景，而只关注美本身。或许他们甚至不会在意诗人的姓名与生平。
This is all to the good, when we think that there are whole nations who think this way. For example, I do not think that in India people have the historical sense. One of the thorns in the flesh of Europeans who write or have written histories of Indian philosophy is that all philosophy is seen as contemporary by the Indians. That is to say, they are interested in the problems themselves, not in the mere biographical fact or historical, chronological fact. That So-and-So was What’s-His-Name’s master, that he came before, that he wrote under that influence-all those things are nothing to them. They care about the riddle of the 当我们想到有些民族正是以这种方式思考时，这一切都显得难能可贵。例如，我认为印度人就缺乏历史时序观念。那些撰写或曾撰写印度哲学史的欧洲学者们最感棘手的难题之一，就是印度人将所有哲学都视为当代思想。也就是说，他们关注的是问题本身，而非单纯的传记事实或历史年代顺序。某人是某位先贤的导师、某人生活在更早的年代、某部著作受到某种影响——这些对他们而言都无关紧要。他们关心的是宇宙之谜。
universe. I suppose, in a time to come (and I hope this time is around the corner), men will care for beauty, not for the circumstances of beauty. Then we will have translations not only as good (we have them already) but as famous as Chapman’s Homer, as Urquhart’s Rabelais, as Pope’s Odyssey. ^(13){ }^{13} I think this is a consummation devoutly to be wished. 我猜想，在未来的某个时刻（但愿这个时刻已近在咫尺），人们将关注美本身，而非美的背景。到那时，我们不仅会有优秀的译作（其实现在已有），还会涌现出像查普曼译荷马、厄克特译拉伯雷、蒲柏译《奥德赛》那样脍炙人口的经典译本。 ^(13){ }^{13} 我认为这实在是值得衷心期盼的圆满境界。
THOUGHT 思
AND 与
POETRY 诗歌
Walter Pater wrote that all art aspires to the condition of music. ^(1){ }^{1} The obvious reason (I speak as a layman of course) would be that, in music, form and substance cannot be torn asunder. Melody, or any piece of music, is a pattern of sounds and pauses unwinding itself in time, a pattern that I do not suppose can be torn. The melody is merely the pattern, and the emotions it sprang from, and the emotions it awakens. The Austrian critic Hanslick ^(2){ }^{2} wrote that music is a language that we can use, that we can understand, but that we are unable to translate. 沃尔特·佩特曾写道，所有艺术都渴望达到音乐的境界。 ^(1){ }^{1} 其显见原因（当然我是以门外汉的身份来说）在于：在音乐中，形式与内容不可分割。旋律或任何音乐作品，都是声音与休止在时间中展开的模式，这种模式我认为是无法割裂的。旋律本身就是这种模式，既是它萌发的情感，也是它唤醒的情感。奥地利评论家汉斯立克 ^(2){ }^{2} 写道，音乐是一种我们能够使用、能够理解却无法翻译的语言。
In the case of literature, and especially of poetry, the case is supposed to be quite the opposite. We might tell the plot of The Scarlet Letter to a friend of 在文学领域，尤其是诗歌创作中，情况理应截然相反。我们或许会向朋友讲述《红字》的情节
ours who had not read it, and I suppose we could even tell the pattern, the framework, the plot of, say, Yeats’s sonnet “Leda and the Swan.” So that we fall to thinking of poetry as being a bastard art, as being something of a mongrel. 我们中未读过它的人，我想我们甚至能说出叶芝十四行诗《丽达与天鹅》的模式、框架和情节。因此我们开始认为诗歌是一种杂种艺术，某种混血产物。
Robert Louis Stevenson has also spoken of this supposed dual nature of poetry. He says that, in a sense, poetry is nearer to the common man, the man in the street. For the materials of poetry are words, and those words are, he says, the very dialect of life. Words are used for everyday humdrum purposes and are the material of the poet, even as sounds are the material of the musician. Stevenson speaks of words as being mere blocks, mere conveniences. Then he wonders at the poet, who is able to weave those rigid symbols meant for everyday or abstract purposes into a pattern, which he calls “the web.” ^(3){ }^{3} If we accept what Stevenson says, we have a theory of poetry-a theory of words’ being made by literature to serve for something beyond their intended use. Words, says Stevenson, are meant for the common everyday commerce of life, and the poet somehow makes of them something magic. I suppose I agree with Stevenson, yet I think he may perhaps be proved wrong. We know that those lonely and admi- 罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森也曾谈及诗歌这种假定的双重性。他说，从某种意义上讲，诗歌更贴近普通人，即街头巷尾的寻常百姓。因为诗歌的素材是词语，而这些词语，据他所言，正是生活的方言。词语被用于日常琐事，却成为诗人的素材，正如声音是音乐家的素材。史蒂文森将词语比作单纯的积木，仅仅是便利的工具。随后他对诗人发出赞叹——诗人竟能将那些为日常或抽象目的而生的僵硬符号，编织成他称之为"网"的图案。 ^(3){ }^{3} 若我们接受史蒂文森的观点，便获得了一种诗歌理论——一种关于词语被文学改造以超越其本意的理论。史蒂文森说，词语本是为生活日常交流而设，诗人却以某种方式赋予它们魔力。我大抵认同史蒂文森，但认为他或许有误。我们知道那些孤独而令...
rable Norsemen, in their elegies, were able to convey to us their loneliness, their courage, their loyalty, their feeling for the bleak seas and the bleak wars. Yet I suppose those men who wrote those poems which seem so near to us and come through the cen-turies-we know that those men would have been hard put to it, had they been made to reason out something in prose. This is the case even with King Alfred. His prose is straightforward; it is efficient for its purposes; but it rings no deep note. He tells us a story-the story may or may not be interesting, but that is all; while there were contemporaries who wrote poetry that still rings, poetry that is still very much living. 那些高贵的北欧人，在他们的挽歌中向我们传递了孤独、勇气、忠诚，以及对苍茫大海与残酷战争的感受。然而我想，那些创作了这些跨越数百年仍让我们倍感亲近的诗篇的人们——倘若要他们用散文来阐述道理，恐怕会束手无策。即便是阿尔弗雷德大王也不例外。他的散文直白明了，能有效达意，却缺乏深邃的共鸣。他讲述的故事或许有趣或许无趣，仅此而已；而与他同时代的诗人所写的诗篇至今仍余音绕梁，那些诗作依然充满生命力。
Pursuing a historical argument (of course I have taken this example at random; it might be paralleled all over the world), we find that words began not by being abstract, but rather by being concrete-and I suppose “concrete” means much the same thing as “poetic” in this case. Let us consider a word such as “dreary”: the word “dreary” meant “bloodstained.” Similarly, the word “glad” meant “polished,” and the word “threat” meant “a threatening crowd.” Those words that now are abstract once had a strong meaning. 在追溯一个历史论点时（当然这个例子是随机选取的；类似情况在世界各地都能找到对应），我们发现词语最初并非抽象，而是具体的——我认为此处的"具体"与"诗意"含义相近。以"dreary"这个词为例：它原本表示"沾满血迹的"。同样地，"glad"原指"打磨光亮的"，"threat"则指"一群来势汹汹的人"。这些如今抽象的词汇，曾经都承载着强烈的具象意义。
We might go on to other examples. Let us take the word “thunder” and look back at the god Thunor, the Saxon counterpart of the Norse Thor. The word punor stood for thunder and for the god; but had we asked the men who came to England with Hengist whether the word stood for the rumbling in the sky or for the angry god, I do not think they would have been subtle enough to understand the difference. I suppose that the word carried both meanings without committing itself very closely to either one of them. I suppose that when they uttered or heard the word “thunder,” they at the same time felt the low rumbling in the sky and saw the lightning and thought of the god. The words were packed with magic; they did not have a hard and fast meaning. 我们可以继续探讨其他例子。以"雷声"一词为例，回溯到日耳曼神话中的托尔神（Thunor），即北欧神话索尔在撒克逊信仰中的对应神祇。"punor"这个词既指雷声也指雷神；但若我们询问那些随亨吉斯特登陆英格兰的部族，这个词究竟代表天空的轰鸣还是愤怒的神明，我想他们未必能理解这其中的微妙区别。这个词应当同时承载着双重含义，而无需严格区分彼此。当古人说出或听到"雷声"时，他们脑海中会同时浮现天际的低沉轰鸣、刺目的闪电，以及那位执掌雷霆的神明。这些词语蕴含着神秘的魔力，其意义并非僵硬不变的。
Therefore, when speaking of poetry we may say that poetry is not doing what Stevenson thoughtpoetry is not trying to take a set of logical coins and work them into magic. Rather, it is bringing language back to its original source. Remember that Alfred North Whitehead wrote that, among the many fallacies, there is the fallacy of the perfect dictionary-the fallacy of thinking that for every perception of the senses, for every statement, for every abstract idea, one can find a counterpart, an exact symbol, in the 因此，当我们谈论诗歌时可以说，诗歌并非如史蒂文森所想——诗歌不是试图将一套逻辑硬币转化为魔法。相反，诗歌是将语言带回其源头。记得阿尔弗雷德·诺斯·怀特海曾写道，在诸多谬误中存在着"完美词典的谬误"——即认为每一种感官知觉、每一个陈述、每一个抽象概念，都能在
dictionary. And the very fact that languages are different makes us suspect that this does not exist. 词典中找到精确对应的符号。而语言之间的差异性恰恰让我们怀疑这种完美对应并不存在。
For example, in English (or rather in the Scots) we have such words as “eerie” and “uncanny.” These words cannot be found in other languages. (Well, of course, we do have the German unheimlich.) Why is this so? Because men who spoke other languages had no need for these words-I suppose a nation evolves the words it needs. This observation, made by Chesterton (I think in his book on Watts), ^(4){ }^{4} amounts to saying that language is not, as we are led to suppose by the dictionary, the invention of academicians or philologists. Rather, it has been evolved through time, through a long time, by peasants, by fishermen, by hunters, by riders. It did not come from the libraries; it came from the fields, from the sea, from rivers, from night, from the dawn. 例如，在英语（更确切地说是苏格兰语）中，我们有"eerie"和"uncanny"这样的词汇。这些词在其他语言中难觅踪影。（当然，德语里确实有"unheimlich"这个对应词。）为何如此？因为使用其他语言的民族不需要这些词汇——我想每个民族都会演化出自己所需的词语。切斯特顿（我记得是在他关于瓦茨的书中）提出的这个观点 ^(4){ }^{4} ，本质上是在说：语言并不像词典引导我们相信的那样，是语言学家或学者的发明。相反，它是经过漫长岁月，由农民、渔夫、猎人和骑手们逐渐演化而来的。语言并非诞生于图书馆，而是源自田野、海洋、河流、黑夜与黎明。
Thus, we have in language the fact (and this seems obvious to me) that words began, in a sense, as magic. Perhaps there was a moment when the word “light” seemed to be flashing and the word “night” was dark. In the case of “night,” we may surmise that it at first stood for the night itself-for its blackness, for its threats, for the shining stars. Then, after ever so long a time, we come to the abstract sense of the word 因此，在语言中存在着这样一个事实（在我看来这显而易见）：词语在某种意义上始于魔法。或许曾有那么一刻，"光"这个词本身就在闪烁，而"夜"这个词天然带着黑暗。就"夜"而言，我们可以推测它最初就代表黑夜本身——代表它的漆黑、它的威胁、它的繁星点点。经过无比漫长的岁月后，我们才逐渐获得这个词的抽象含义。
“night”-the period between the twilight of the raven (as the Hebrews had it) and the twilight of the dove, the beginning of day. “黑夜”——介于乌鸦的暮色（如希伯来人所言）与白鸽的晨光之间的时段，即白昼的开端。
Since I have spoken of the Hebrews, we might find an additional example in Jewish mysticism, in the Kabbalah. To the Jews, it seemed obvious there lay a power in words. This is the idea behind all those stories of talismans, of Abracadabras-stories to be found in the Arabian Nights. They read in the first chapter of the Torah: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” So it seemed obvious to them that in the word “light” there lay a strength sufficient to cause light to shine all over the world, a strength sufficient to engender, to beget light. I have done some thinking about this problem of thought and meaning (a problem that of course I will not solve). We spoke earlier about the fact that in music the sound, the form, and the substance cannot be torn asunder-that they are in fact the same thing. And it may be suspected that to a certain degree the same thing happens in poetry. 既然提及希伯来人，我们可以在犹太神秘主义卡巴拉中找到另一个例证。对犹太人而言，词语中蕴藏力量是显而易见的。这正是《天方夜谭》中所有护符故事与“阿布拉卡达布拉”咒语背后的理念。他们在《托拉》首章中读到：“神说：‘要有光’，就有了光。”因此他们自然认为，“光”这个词蕴含着足以让光芒普照世界的力量，蕴含着孕育与创造光明的伟力。关于思想与意义这个命题（当然我无力解答），我曾有过一些思考。我们先前讨论过音乐中声响、形式与实质不可分割——它们本质上是同一事物。或许可以推测，诗歌在某种程度上也遵循着相同的法则。
Let us consider two fragments by two great poets. The first comes from a short piece by the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats: “Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young / We loved each other and were igno- 让我们来品味两位伟大诗人的诗句片段。第一段出自爱尔兰大诗人威廉·巴特勒·叶芝的短章："肉体衰朽即是智慧；年少时/我们相爱却懵懂无
rant.” ^(5){ }^{5} Here we find at the beginning a statement: “Bodily decrepitude is wisdom.” This, of course, could be read ironically. Yeats knew quite well that we might attain bodily decrepitude without attaining wisdom. I suppose that wisdom is more important than love; love, than mere happiness. There is something trivial about happiness. We get a statement about happiness in the other part of the stanza. “Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young / We loved each other and were ignorant.” 知。" ^(5){ }^{5} 开篇便是一个论断："肉体衰朽即是智慧。"这当然可以解读为反讽。叶芝深知，我们可能垂垂老矣却未得智慧。我以为智慧重于爱情，而爱情又胜于单纯的快乐。快乐总带着几分浅薄。诗节后半段道出了关于快乐的见解："肉体衰朽即是智慧；年少时/我们相爱却懵懂无知。"
Now I will take a verse by George Meredith. It runs thus: “Not till the fire is dying in the grate / Look we for any kinship with the stars.” ^(6){ }^{6} This statement, taken at its face value, is false. The idea that we are all interested in philosophy only when we are through with bodily lusts-or when the lusts of the body are through with us-is, I think, false. We know of many passionate young philosophers; think of Berkeley, of Spinoza, and of Schopenhauer. Yet this is quite irrelevant. What is really important is the fact that both fragments-“Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young / We loved each other and were ignorant,” and Meredith’s “Not till the fire is dying in the grate / Look we for any kinship with the stars”-taken in the abstract way, mean much the same thing. Yet they strike quite 现在我要引用乔治·梅瑞狄斯的一行诗："唯有当炉火渐熄渐微/我们才仰望星空寻亲缘" ^(6){ }^{6} 。从字面看，这个论断并不成立。认为我们只有在肉体欲望消退时——或是当肉体欲望抛弃我们时——才会对哲学产生兴趣，这种观点在我看来是错误的。我们熟知的许多哲学家都充满激情：想想贝克莱、斯宾诺莎和叔本华。但这其实无关紧要。真正重要的是，叶芝的"肉体衰朽方显智慧；年少时/我们相爱却懵懂无知"与梅瑞狄斯的诗句，若抽象来看，表达的是相近的含义。然而它们拨动的却是截然
different chords. When we are told-or when I now tell you-that they mean the same thing, you all instinctively and rightly feel that this is irrelevant, that the verses are really different. 不同的心弦。当有人告诉你们——或如我现在所言——这两者意义相同时，你们都会本能而正确地感到这种说法无关痛痒，因为这两节诗本质上截然不同。
I have suspected many a time that meaning is really something added to verse. I know for a fact that we feel the beauty of a poem before we even begin to think of a meaning. I do not know whether I have already quoted an example from one of the sonnets of Shakespeare. It runs thus: 我曾多次怀疑，诗意实则是附加于诗句之上的东西。我确切地知道，我们往往在尚未思考诗义之前，就已感受到诗歌之美。不知是否已援引过莎士比亚十四行诗中的一例，其诗云：
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assured, And peace proclaims olives of endless age. ^(7){ }^{7} 凡尘的月亮已熬过月蚀之灾，
悲观的预言者自嘲预判失败；
无常之事如今戴上确定之冠，
和平宣告橄榄枝万世长存在。 ^(7){ }^{7}
Now, if we look at the footnotes, we find that the first two lines-“The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, / And the sad augurs mock their own pres-age”-are supposed to be an allusion to Queen Eliza-beth-the Virgin Queen, the famous queen compared by the court poets to Diana the chaste, the maiden. I suppose that when Shakespeare wrote these lines, he had both moons in mind. He had that metaphor of “the moon, the Virgin Queen”; and I do not think he could help thinking of the moon in the sky. The point I 若查阅注释便会发现，前两行"凡尘的月亮已熬过月蚀之灾，/悲观的预言者自嘲预判失败"——被认为暗指伊丽莎白女王，这位童贞女王常被宫廷诗人比作贞洁的月神狄安娜。我猜想莎士比亚写下这些诗句时，脑海中同时浮现着两种月亮意象：既有"月亮象征童贞女王"的隐喻，又不可避免地想到夜空中真实的月亮。关键在于
would like to make is that we do not have to commit ourselves to a meaning-to any one of the meanings. We feel the verses before we adopt one, the other, or both of these hypotheses. “The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, / And the sad augurs mock their own presage” has, at least to me, a beauty far beyond the mere fact of how it is interpreted. 我想阐明的是，我们不必拘泥于某个特定释义。在采纳其中一种或两种假说之前，诗句本身已让我们有所感悟。"凡尘月轮终渡蚀，悲兆先知自嘲谶"——至少对我而言，其美感远超任何具体诠释。
There are, of course, verses that are beautiful and meaningless. Yet they still have a meaning-not to the reason but to the imagination. Let me take a very simple example: “Two red roses across the moon.” ^(8){ }^{8} Here it might be said that the meaning is the image given by the words; but to me, at least, there is no definite image. There is a pleasure in the words, and of course in the lilt of the words, in the music of the words. And let us take another example from William Morris: “‘Therefore,’ said fair Yoland of the flowers” (fair Yoland is a witch) “'This is the tune of Seven Towers.” ^(''){ }^{\prime \prime} These verses have been torn from their context, and yet I think they stand. 当然存在优美却无实意的诗句。但它们仍具有意义——不是对理性而言，而是对想象力的馈赠。举个简单例子："两朵红玫瑰横越月亮" ^(8){ }^{8} 。可以说其意义在于文字勾勒的画面；但至少对我而言，这画面并不明晰。文字本身的韵律与乐感就足以带来愉悦。再看威廉·莫里斯的例子："'故此，'花丛中的美丽约兰说"（约兰是位女巫）"'此乃七塔之调'" ^(''){ }^{\prime \prime} 。这些诗句虽脱离上下文，却依然自成意境。
Somehow, though I love English, when I am recalling English verse I find that my language, Spanish, is calling to me. I would like to quote a few lines. If you do not understand them, you may console yourselves by thinking that I do not understand them either, and 尽管我热爱英语，但当我回忆英语诗歌时，却发现我的母语西班牙语在召唤着我。我想引用几行诗句。若你们无法理解，不妨这样安慰自己：其实我也不甚了了，而且
that they are meaningless. They are beautifully, in a quite lovely way meaningless; they are not meant to mean anything. They come from that too-forgotten Bolivian poet Ricardo Jaimes Freire-a friend of Darío and of Lugones. He wrote them in the last decade of the nineteenth century. I wish I could remember the whole sonnet-I think that something of its sonorous quality would come through to you. But there is no need. I think that these lines should be sufficient. They run thus: 这些诗句本就没有意义。它们以绝美的方式毫无意义地存在着；它们本就不该承载任何含义。这些诗句出自被世人遗忘的玻利维亚诗人里卡多·海梅斯·弗雷雷——达里奥和卢贡内斯的好友。他在十九世纪最后十年写下这些诗句。我多希望能记住整首十四行诗——我想你们或许能感受到它那铿锵的音韵之美。不过没必要全篇引用，这几行已足够：
Peregrina paloma imaginaria Que enardeces los últimos amores Alma de luz, de música y de flores Peregrina paloma imaginaria. ^(10){ }^{10} 幻想的朝圣白鸽啊
你点燃了最后的爱恋
光明、音乐与鲜花之魂
幻想的朝圣白鸽 ^(10){ }^{10}
They do not mean anything, they are not meant to mean anything; and yet they stand. They stand as a thing of beauty. They are-at least to me-inexhaustible. 它们毫无意义，也本不该有意义；却依然屹立。作为美的化身而存在。至少对我而言——它们具有永恒的魅力。
And now, since I have quoted Meredith, I will take another example. This example is different from the others, since it bears a meaning; we feel a conviction that it corresponds to an experience of the poet. And yet, had we to put our finger on that experience, or if the poet were to tell us how he came to these lines, 既然我已引用了梅瑞狄斯的诗句，现在我要再举一个例子。这个例子与前几个不同，因为它承载着某种深意；我们能感受到诗人确实经历过与之对应的体验。然而，若要我们明确指出那是何种体验，或是让诗人亲口讲述这些诗行
how he attained them, we should be at a loss. The lines are: 的创作缘由与过程，我们恐怕都难以言明。诗行如下：
Love, that had robbed us of immortal things, This little movement mercifully gave, Where I have seen across the twilight wave The swan sail with her young beneath her wings. ^(11){ }^{11} "爱情，原已夺走我们不朽的珍宝，/却慈悲地赐予这微小的悸动，/让我得以望见暮色中的涟漪上，/天鹅携幼雏在羽翼下悠然游过。" ^(11){ }^{11}
We find in the first line a reflection that may strike us as strange: “Love, that had robbed us of immortal things”-not (as we might fairly suppose) “love that had made us a gift of immortal things.” No-“Love, that had robbed us of immortal things, / This little movement mercifully gave.” We are made to feel that he is speaking of himself and of his beloved. “Where I have seen across the twilight wave / The swan sail with her young beneath her wings”: here we have the threefold beat of the line-we do not need any anecdotes about the swan, about how she sailed into a river and then into Meredith’s poem, and then forever into my memory. We know, or at least II know, that I have heard something unforgettable. And I may say of this what Hanslick said of music: I can recall it, I can understand it (not with the mere reason-with a deeper imagination); but I cannot translate it. And I do not think it needs any translation. 我们在首行发现一个可能令人感到奇特的思考："爱，曾夺走我们不朽之物"——而非（正如我们可能合理推测的）"爱曾赐予我们不朽之物"。不——"爱，曾夺走我们不朽之物，/却仁慈地给予这微小悸动。"我们感受到他是在诉说自身与挚爱。"暮色中我曾望见天鹅/携幼雏在羽翼下掠过粼粼波光"：这里我们感受到诗句的三重韵律——无需任何关于天鹅的轶事，无需知晓她如何游入河流，又如何游进梅瑞狄斯的诗行，最终永远游进我的记忆。我们明白，至少 II 明白，我听见了某种难以忘怀的声音。对此我可以用汉斯立克评价音乐的话来说：我能回忆它，能理解它（不仅用理性——更用深邃的想象）；却无法转译它。而我认为它本就不需要任何翻译。
Since I have used the word “threefold,” I am reminded of a metaphor by a Greek poet of Alexandria. He wrote about “the lyre of the threefold night.” This strikes me as being a mighty line. When I looked into the notes, I found that the lyre was Hercules, and that Hercules had been begotten by Jupiter in a night that had the length of three nights, so that the pleasure of the god might be vast. This explanation is quite irrelevant; in fact, perhaps it rather does damage to the verse. It provides us with a small anecdote and takes away something from that wonderful riddle, “the lyre of the threefold night.” This should be enough-the riddle. We have no need to read it. The riddle is there. 既然我用了"三重"这个词，便想起一位亚历山大城的希腊诗人用过的隐喻。他写道"三重夜的竖琴"。这诗句令我震撼。查阅注释时发现，竖琴指的是赫拉克勒斯，而赫拉克勒斯是朱庇特在相当于三夜长度的夜晚孕育的，为让神明的欢愉得以绵长。这番解释其实无关紧要；甚至可能损害了诗句本身。它提供了一则琐碎轶事，却夺走了"三重夜的竖琴"这个绝妙谜语的神韵。谜语本身已足够——我们无需解读。谜题就在那里。
I have spoken of words standing out at the beginning, when men invented them. I have thought that the word “thunder” might mean not only the sound but the god. And I have spoken of the word “night.” When I speak of night, I am inevitably—and happily for us, I think-reminded of the last sentence of the first book in Finnegans Wake, wherein Joyce speaks of “the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!” ^(12){ }^{12} This is an extreme example of an elaborate style. We feel that such a line could have been written only after centuries of literature. We feel that the line is an invention, a poem-a very complex web, as 我曾谈及词语在诞生之初的卓然独立，当人类首次创造它们时。我思索"雷"这个词或许不仅指声响，更暗指神明。我也曾论及"夜"这个字眼。每当我提及夜晚，总会不由自主地——对我们而言何其幸运——想起《芬尼根守灵夜》第一卷的末句，乔伊斯写道："河水汤汤，左右奔流的河水啊。夜！" ^(12){ }^{12} 这是繁复文风的极致典范。我们感受到这样的诗句唯有历经数世纪文学积淀方能诞生。我们觉得这句是独创，是诗篇——一张精妙绝伦的网，正如
Stevenson would have had it. And yet I suspect there was a moment when the word “night” was quite as impressive, was quite as strange, was quite as awe-striking as this beautiful winding sentence: “rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!” 史蒂文森所追求的那般。然而我怀疑，当"夜"这个字初现时，它必定同样震撼人心，同样神秘莫测，同样令人敬畏，不亚于这句蜿蜒优美的："河水汤汤，左右奔流的河水啊。夜！"
Of course, there are two ways of using poetry-at least, two opposite ways (there are many others, of course). One of the ways of the poet is to use common words and somehow make them uncommon-to evolve magic from them. Quite a good example would be that very English poem, made of understatement, by Edmund Blunden: 当然，诗歌的运用之道至少有两种截然不同的方式（自然还有其他多种）。诗人惯用的手法之一，便是化平凡之词为非凡——从中孕育出魔力。埃德蒙·布伦登那首极具英伦特色的含蓄诗作堪称佳例：
I have been young and now am not too old; And I have seen the righteous forsaken, His health, his honour and his quality taken. This is not what we formerly were told. ^(13){ }^{13} 我曾年少，而今未至耄耋；
且见正直者遭弃，
健康、尊严与品性尽失。
此非往昔所闻之道。 ^(13){ }^{13}
Here we have plain words; we have a plain meaning, or at least a plain feeling-and this is more important. But the words do not stand out as they did in that last example from Joyce. 此处用词平实，表意直白，或至少情感真挚——后者更为重要。但这些词语并不像乔伊斯最后的例子那般夺目。
And in this one, which will be mere quotation. It will be three words. They run thus: “Glittergates of elfinbone.” ^(14){ }^{14} “Glittergates” is Joyce’s gift to us. And 再看这句纯粹引用的例子，仅三个词："精灵骨的光辉之门" ^(14){ }^{14} 。"光辉之门"（Glittergates）是乔伊斯馈赠给我们的造词。
then we have “elfinbone.” Of course, when Joyce wrote this, he was thinking of the German for “ivory,” Elfenbein. Elfenbein is a distortion of Elephantenbein, “elephant bone.” But Joyce saw the possibilities of that word, and he translated it into English; and then we have “elfinbone.” I think “elfin” is more beautiful than “elfen.” Besides, as we have heard Elfenbein so many times, it does not come to us with the shock of surprise, with the shock of amazement, that we find in that new and elegant word “elfinbone.” 于是我们有了"精灵骨"这个词。当然，乔伊斯写下这个词时，他想到的是德语中的"象牙"——Elfenbein。Elfenbein 其实是 Elephantenbein（"大象骨"）的变体。但乔伊斯看到了这个词的可能性，将其译成英语；于是就有了"精灵骨"。我认为"elfin"比"elfen"更优美。此外，由于我们听过太多次 Elfenbein，它已无法带给我们那种令人震惊、令人惊叹的冲击感，而这种冲击感恰恰存在于这个新颖优雅的词"精灵骨"之中。
So we have two ways of writing poetry. People speak generally of a plain style and an elaborate style. I think this is wrong, because what is important, what is all-meaning, is the fact that poetry should be living or dead, not that the style should be plain or elaborate. That depends on the poet. We may have, for example, very striking poetry written plainly, and such poetry is, to me, no less admirable-in fact, I sometimes think it is more admirable-than the other. For example, when Stevenson (and as I have disagreed with Stevenson, I want to worship him now) wrote his “Requiem”: 我们有两种写诗的方式。人们通常谈论平实风格与繁复风格。我认为这是错误的，因为重要的是诗歌应当鲜活或死寂，而非风格平实或繁复——这取决于诗人。例如，我们可能有以平实语言写就却极为动人的诗篇，对我而言，这类诗歌丝毫不逊色——事实上，有时我认为它们比另一种更令人赞叹。比如当史蒂文森（既然我曾与他意见相左，此刻更想向他致敬）写下《安魂曲》时：
Under the wild and starry sky 在狂野而星光璀璨的天空下
Dig the grave and let me lie 掘好坟墓，容我长眠
Glad did I live and gladly die, 生亦欢欣死亦乐，
THOUGHT AND POETRY 思想与诗艺
And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you 'grave for me: “Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.” 我自安然长眠去。此诗当为吾墓铭：“此君终得安息处，水手归家离波涛，猎人返自深山麓。”
This verse is plain language; it is plain and living. But also, the poet must have worked very hard to get it. I do not think that such lines as “Glad did I live and gladly die” come except in those very rare moments when the muse is generous. 此诗语言质朴；它平实而鲜活。但诗人必定也为此倾注了大量心血。像“生亦欢欣死亦乐”这样的诗句，若非缪斯格外垂青的罕有时刻，恐难觅得。
I think that our idea of words’ being a mere algebra of symbols comes from dictionaries. I do not want to be ungrateful to dictionaries-my favorite reading would be Dr. Johnson, Dr. Skeat, and that composite author, the Shorter Oxford. ^(15){ }^{15} Yet I think the fact of having long catalogues of words and explanations makes us think that the explanations exhaust the words, and that any one of those coins, of those words, can be exchanged for another. But I think we know-and the poet should feel-that every word stands by itself, that every word is unique. And we get this feeling when a writer uses a little-known word. For example, we think of the word “sedulous” as being a rather far-fetched but interesting word. Yet when Stevenson-I greet him again-wrote that he 我认为，我们之所以将词语视为纯粹的符号代数，根源在于词典。我并非对词典心存不敬——约翰逊博士、斯凯特博士以及《牛津简明词典》的编纂者们始终是我最钟爱的作者。 ^(15){ }^{15} 但漫长的词汇罗列与释义清单确实让我们产生错觉，以为那些解释已穷尽词语的全部内涵，以为每个词语都像货币般可以相互兑换。然而我们应当明白——诗人尤其应当感知——每个词语都自成宇宙，每个词语都独一无二。当作家使用生僻词汇时，这种感受尤为强烈。比如"sedulous"（勤勉的）这个词，我们原以为它只是牵强却有趣的冷僻词，直到史蒂文森——让我再次向他致意——写下他
“played the sedulous ape” to Hazlitt, then suddenly the word comes to life. ^(16){ }^{16} So this theory (it is not mine, of course-I’m sure it can be found in other authors), this idea of words’ beginning as magic and being brought back to magic by poetry, is, I think, a true one. "如勤勉的猿猴般模仿"黑兹利特时，这个词突然焕发出鲜活的生命力。 ^(16){ }^{16} 因此这个理论（当然并非我的创见——想必在其他作家著作中也能找到），这种认为词语始于魔法又被诗歌重新赋予魔力的观点，我认为是真实的。
Now we come to another, quite important question: that of conviction. When we read an author (and we may be thinking of verse, we may be thinking of prose-it is all one), it is essential that we should believe in him. Or rather, that we should attain that “willing suspension of disbelief” of which Coleridge spoke. ^(17){ }^{17} When I spoke of elaborate verses, of words’ standing out, I should have remembered of course: 现在我们来到另一个相当重要的问题：关于信念。当我们阅读一位作者的作品时（无论是诗歌还是散文，道理相通），关键在于我们应当信任他。或者更准确地说，我们应该达到柯勒律治所说的"自愿暂停怀疑"状态。 ^(17){ }^{17} 当我谈及精雕细琢的诗句、那些脱颖而出的词语时，我本应记得：
Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. ^(18){ }^{18} 绕他三匝结成环，
闭目心怀神圣畏，
因他啜饮蜜露甘，
更尝天国乳浆醉。 ^(18){ }^{18}
Let us now-and this will be our last subjectspeak about this conviction that is needed both in prose and in verse. In the case of a novel, for example (and why should we not speak of the novel when we are speaking of poetry?), our conviction lies in the fact that we believe in the central character. If we be- 现在让我们以最后一个话题来探讨这种散文与诗歌都需要的信念。以小说为例（既然谈论诗歌，为何不能讨论小说？），我们的信念在于相信核心人物的真实性。如果我们...
lieve in him, all is well. I am not-and I hope this will not come as a heresy to you-I am not quite sure about the adventures of Don Quixote. I may disbelieve in some of them. I think some of them may be exaggerated. I feel quite sure that when the knight spoke to the squire, he was not weaving those long set speeches. Yet such things are not important; what is really important is the fact that I believe in Don Quixote himself. This is why books such as Azorín’s La ruta de Don Quijote, or even Unamuno’s Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, ^(19){ }^{19} strike me as somehow irrelevant, for they take the adventures too much in earnest. While I really believe in the knight himself. Even if somebody told me that those things had never happened, I would still go on believing in Don Quixote as I believe in the character of a friend. 我相信他，一切便都安好。至于堂吉诃德的冒险——但愿这不会让你们觉得是异端邪说——我其实并不十分确信。有些情节我可能并不相信，甚至觉得有些夸张。我敢肯定，当骑士对侍从说话时，绝不会编织那些长篇大论的演说。但这些都无关紧要；真正重要的是，我深信堂吉诃德这个人物本身。正因如此，像阿索林的《堂吉诃德之路》或乌纳穆诺的《堂吉诃德与桑丘传》这类作品，在我看来反而有些离题，因为它们过分拘泥于那些冒险故事。而我真正相信的是这位骑士本身。即使有人告诉我那些事从未发生过，我依然会像相信一位朋友的品格那样，继续相信堂吉诃德。
I have had the luck to possess many admirable friends, and there are many anecdotes told of them. Some of those anecdotes have-I am sorry to say, I am proud to say-been coined by myself. But they are not false; they are essentially true. De Quincey said that all anecdotes are apocryphal. I think that had he cared to go deeper into the matter, he would have said that they are historically apocryphal but essentially true. If a story is told of a man, then that story resem- 我有幸拥有许多令人钦佩的朋友，关于他们的轶事不胜枚举。其中有些故事——说来惭愧，却也令我自豪——是由我本人杜撰的。但这些故事并非虚假，它们在本质上是真实的。德·昆西曾断言所有轶事皆属伪托。我想倘若他愿意深入探讨，定会补充说：这些故事在史实层面虽不可考，却道出了本质的真实。若某个故事被附会于某人身上，那必然是因为......
bles him; that story is his symbol. When I think of such dear friends of mine as Don Quixote, Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, Huckleberry Finn, Peer Gynt, and so on (I’m not sure I have many more friends), I feel that the men who wrote their histories were drawing the longbow, ^(20){ }^{20} but that the adventures they evolved were mirrors or adjectives or attributes of those men. That is to say, if we believe in Mr. Sherlock Holmes, then we may look with derision on the hound of the Baskervilles; we need not fear him. So I say that what is important is our believing in a character. 他；那个故事就是他的象征。当我想到我那些亲爱的朋友——堂吉诃德、匹克威克先生、夏洛克·福尔摩斯、华生医生、哈克贝利·费恩、培尔·金特等等（恐怕我也没有更多朋友了），我觉得那些书写他们生平的人都在夸大其词，但他们所构思的冒险故事却是这些人物的一面镜子、一种修饰或特质。也就是说，如果我们相信夏洛克·福尔摩斯先生的存在，那么我们就可以带着嘲弄的眼光看待巴斯克维尔的猎犬；我们无需畏惧它。所以我认为重要的是我们相信一个角色。
In the case of poetry, there might seem to be a dif-ference-for a writer works with metaphors. The metaphors need not be believed in. What is really important is the fact that we should think they correspond to the writer’s emotion. This is, I should say, quite sufficient. For example, when Lugones wrote about the sunset’s being “un violento pavo real verde, deliriado en oro,” ^(21){ }^{21} there is no need to worry about the likeness-or rather the unlikeness-of a sunset to a green peacock. What is important is that we are made to feel that he was stirred by the sunset, that he needed that metaphor to convey his feelings to us. This is what I mean by conviction in poetry. 就诗歌而言，似乎存在一种差异——因为作家运用隐喻创作。这些隐喻未必需要被信以为真。真正重要的是，我们应当认为它们与作者的情感相契合。我认为，这便足够了。例如，当卢贡内斯描写夕阳是"一只暴烈的绿孔雀，在金色中癫狂"时，我们无需纠结夕阳与绿孔雀的相似性——或者说差异性。关键在于，我们能感受到他被夕阳所震撼，他需要借助这个隐喻向我们传递他的感受。这就是我所说的诗歌中的信念。
This has, of course, little to do with plain or elaborate language. When Milton writes, for example (and I am sorry to say, perhaps to reveal to you, that these are the last lines of Paradise Regained), “hee unobserv’d / Home to his Mothers house private return’d,” ^(22){ }^{22} the language is plain enough, but at the same time it is dead. While when he writes “When I consider how my light is spent / Ere half my days, in this dark world,” ^(23){ }^{23} the language he uses may be elaborate, but it is a living language. In that sense, I think writers like Góngora, John Donne, William Butler Yeats, and James Joyce are justified. Their words, their stanzas may be far-fetched; we may find strange things in them. But we are made to feel that the emotion behind those words is a true one. This should be sufficient for us to tender them our admiration. 当然，这与平实或华丽的语言关系不大。例如当弥尔顿写下（我很抱歉地说，或许要向你们揭示，这是《复乐园》的最后几行）"他悄然归去/不为人知地回到母亲家中"时， ^(22){ }^{22} 语言足够平实，但同时也死气沉沉。而当他写下"当我思量我的光明如何耗尽/在这黑暗世界，未及半生"时， ^(23){ }^{23} 所用的语言或许华丽，却是鲜活的语言。从这个意义上说，我认为像贡戈拉、约翰·多恩、威廉·巴特勒·叶芝和詹姆斯·乔伊斯这样的作家是情有可原的。他们的词句、诗节或许牵强；我们可能在其中发现奇怪的东西。但我们能感受到这些文字背后的情感是真实的。这就足以让我们献上钦佩之情。
I have spoken of several poets today, and I am sorry to say that in the last lecture I shall be speaking of a lesser poet-a poet whose works I never read, but a poet whose works I have to write. I shall speak of myself. And I hope that you will forgive me this quite affectionate anticlimax. 今天我谈到了几位诗人，很遗憾地告诉大家，在最后一讲中我将谈及一位次要诗人——一位我从未读过其作品，却不得不为其创作作品的诗人。我要谈谈我自己。希望你们能原谅这个充满温情的虎头蛇尾。
My purpose was to speak about the poet’s creed, but, looking into myself, I have found that I have only a faltering kind of creed. This creed may perhaps be useful to me, but hardly to others. 我本想谈谈诗人的信条，但审视内心后，发现自己仅持有一种摇摆不定的信念。这种信念或许对我有用，但对他人恐怕无甚裨益。
In fact, I think of all poetic theories as being mere tools for the writing of a poem. I suppose there should be as many creeds, as many religions, as there are poets. Though at the end I will say something about my likes and dislikes as to the writing of poetry, I think I will begin with some personal memories, the memories not only of a writer but also of a reader. 事实上，我认为所有诗歌理论都不过是写诗的工具。我以为每位诗人都该有专属的信条与信仰。尽管最后我会谈及个人对诗歌创作的偏好，但我想先分享些私人记忆——不仅是作为写作者的记忆，更是作为阅读者的记忆。
I think of myself as being essentially a reader. As you are aware, I have ventured into writing; but I 我始终认为自己本质上是个读者。诚如诸位所知，我虽斗胆尝试写作；但
think that what I have read is far more important than what I have written. For one reads what one likesyet one writes not what one would like to write, but what one is able to write. 我认为阅读的收获远胜于写作的产出。因为人总是读其所爱，却无法写其所愿，只能写其所能。
My memory carries me back to a certain evening some sixty years ago, to my father’s library in Buenos Aires. I see him; I see the gaslight; I could place my hand on the shelves. I know exactly where to find Burton’s Arabian Nights and Prescott’s Conquest of Peru, though the library exists no longer. I go back to that already ancient South American evening, and I see my father. I am seeing him at this moment; and I hear his voice saying words that I understood not, but yet I felt. Those words came from Keats, from his “Ode to a Nightingale.” I have reread them ever so many times, as you have, but I would like go over them once more. I think this might please my father’s ghost, if he is around. 记忆将我带回约六十年前布宜诺斯艾利斯的某个夜晚，父亲的书房里。我看见他；我看见煤气灯；我的手能触到书架。虽然那座书房早已不复存在，我仍能准确指出伯顿版《天方夜谭》和普雷斯科特《秘鲁征服史》的位置。我重返那个已然古老的南美黄昏，看见父亲的身影。此刻我正注视着他，听见他说出那些我虽不解其意却为之震颤的诗句。那些词句来自济慈，来自他的《夜莺颂》。如同你们一样，我反复重读这些诗句，但此刻仍想再次重温。若父亲的魂灵尚在人间，我想这或许能让他欣慰。
The lines I remember are those that you are recalling at this moment: 我铭记在心的诗行，此刻也正浮现在你们脑海：
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! 汝非为死而生，不朽的灵禽！
No hungry generations tread thee down; 饥馑的世代未能将汝践踏；
The voice I hear this passing night was heard 我今夜听到的歌声也曾被
In ancient days by emperor and clown: 古时的帝王与小丑聆听：
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 或许正是同一支曲调曾寻得归途
A POET'S CREED 诗人的信条
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn. ^(1){ }^{1} 露丝思乡心切，含泪伫立在异乡的麦田中央。 ^(1){ }^{1}
I thought I knew all about words, all about language (when one is a child, one feels that one knows many things), but those words came as a revelation to me. Of course, I did not understand them. How could I understand those lines about birds’-about ani-mals’-being somehow eternal, timeless, because they live in the present? We are mortal because we live in the past and in the future-because we remember a time when we did not exist, and foresee a time when we shall be dead. Those verses came to me through their music. I had thought of language as being a way of saying things, of uttering complaints, of saying that one was glad, or sad, and so on. Yet when I heard those lines (and I have been hearing them, in a sense, ever since), I knew that language could also be a music and a passion. And thus was poetry revealed to me. 我曾以为自己通晓所有关于词语、关于语言的知识（孩童时期总觉得自己懂得很多），但那些诗句却给了我全新的启示。当然，当时我并未真正理解。我怎能理解那些关于鸟儿——关于动物——因其活在当下而获得某种永恒与不朽的诗句？我们之所以会死亡，是因为我们活在过去与未来之中——因为我们记得自己尚未存在的时光，也预见到终将死去的时刻。那些诗句最初是通过其韵律打动我的。我原以为语言只是表达事物、抒发抱怨、传递喜怒哀乐的工具。但当我听到这些诗句时（某种意义上说，此后它们一直萦绕在我耳畔），我意识到语言还可以是音乐，是激情。就这样，诗歌向我揭开了它的面纱。
I have toyed with an idea-the idea that although a man’s life is compounded of thousands and thousands of moments and days, those many instants and those many days may be reduced to a single one: the moment when a man knows who he is, when he sees himself face to face. I suppose that when Judas kissed Jesus (if indeed he did so), he felt at that moment that 我曾玩味过一个念头——尽管人的一生由千万个瞬间和日子组成，但那些无数时刻与岁月或许都可浓缩为唯一的一瞬：当一个人认清自我本质、直面真我的那个瞬间。我猜想，当犹大亲吻耶稣时（倘若确有其事），他在那一刻必然意识到
he was a traitor, that to be a traitor was his destiny, and that he was being loyal to that evil destiny. We all remember The Red Badge of Courage, the story of a man who does not know whether he is a coward or a brave man. Then the moment comes and he knows who he is. When I heard those lines of Keats’s, I suddenly felt that that was a great experience. I have been feeling it ever since. And perhaps from that moment (I suppose I may exaggerate for the purposes of a lecture) I thought of myself as being “literary.” 自己就是叛徒，背叛就是他的宿命，而他正忠诚地履行着这邪恶的天命。我们都记得《红色英勇勋章》里那个不知自己是懦夫还是勇士的主人公，直到决定性时刻降临，他才真正认清自我。当我听到济慈的那些诗句时，突然感受到那是一种伟大的体验。这种感受至今萦绕心头。或许正是从那一刻起（为了演讲效果容我稍作夸张），我开始自视为"文学之人"。
That is to say, many things have happened to me, as to all men. I have found joy in many things-in swimming, in writing, in looking at a sunrise or a sunset, in being in love, and so on. But somehow the central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry. At first, certainly, I was only a reader. Yet I think the happiness of a reader is beyond that of a writer, for a reader need feel no trouble, no anxiety: he is merely out for happiness. And happiness, when you are a reader, is frequent. Thus, before I go on to speak of my literary output, I would like to say a few words about books that have been important to me. I know that this list will abound in omissions, as all lists do. In fact, the danger of making a list is that the omissions 也就是说，如同所有人一样，我经历过许多事。游泳、写作、观赏日出日落、坠入爱河等等，都曾带给我欢愉。但不知为何，我生命的核心始终与文字的存在密不可分，与将文字编织成诗的无限可能紧密相连。最初，我当然只是个读者。然而我认为读者的幸福更胜于作者，因为读者无需承受烦恼与焦虑：他们纯粹是为了快乐而来。而当你身为读者时，快乐是常伴左右的。因此，在谈及我的文学创作之前，我想先说说那些对我至关重要的书籍。我知道这份书单难免挂一漏万，所有清单皆是如此。事实上，列清单的危险性就在于那些被遗漏的
stand out and that people think of you as being insensitive. 部分会显得格外刺眼，让人误以为你缺乏感知力。
I spoke a few moments ago about Burton’s Arabian Nights. When I really think about the Arabian Nights, I am thinking not of those many, and ponderous, and pedantic (or rather stilted) volumes, but of what I may call the true Arabian Nights—the Arabian Nights of Galland and, perhaps, of Edward William Lane. ^(2){ }^{2} I have done most of my reading in English; most books have come to me through the English language, and I am deeply grateful for that privilege. 我刚才谈到了伯顿翻译的《天方夜谭》。当我真正思考《天方夜谭》时，脑海中浮现的并非那些厚重繁复、学究气十足（或者说矫揉造作）的多卷本，而是堪称真正意义上的《天方夜谭》——比如加朗的译本，或许还有爱德华·威廉·莱恩的版本。 ^(2){ }^{2} 我平生阅读多是通过英文完成；绝大多数书籍都是经由英语这一媒介与我相遇，对此我深怀感激。
When I think of the Arabian Nights, the first feeling I have is one of vast freedom. Yet at the same time I know that the book, though vast and free, is limited to a few patterns. For example, the number three occurs in it very frequently. And we have no characters, or rather flat characters (except perhaps for the silent barber). Then we have evil men and good men, rewards and punishments, magic rings and talismans, and so on. 每当想起《天方夜谭》，首先涌上心头的是一种无拘无束的自由感。但与此同时我也明白，这部作品虽然浩瀚恣肆，却遵循着某些固定模式。比如数字"三"在书中反复出现。书中人物没有复杂性格，或者说都是扁平化的（除了那位沉默的理发师）。故事里充斥着善人与恶人、奖赏与惩罚、魔戒与护符等等元素。
Though we are apt to think of mere size as being somehow brutal, I think there are many books whose essence lies in their being lengthy. For example, in the case of the Arabian Nights, we need to think that the book is a large one, that the story goes on, that we 虽然我们往往认为单纯的篇幅庞大略显粗陋，但确实有许多著作的精髓正在于其鸿篇巨制。以《天方夜谭》为例，我们必须意识到这是一部恢弘巨著，故事绵延不绝，我们
A POET'S CREED 诗人的信条
may never come to the end of it. We may never have gone through all the thousand and one nights, but the fact that they are there somehow lends wideness to the whole thing. We know that we can delve deeper, that we can roam on, and that the marvels, the magicians, the three beautiful sisters, and so on will always be there, awaiting us. 或许永远无法穷尽它。我们可能永远无法读完那《一千零一夜》的所有故事，但它们的存在本身就为整部作品赋予了无限宽广的意境。我们知道可以继续深入探索，可以继续徜徉其中，那些奇迹、魔法师、三姐妹等瑰丽想象将永远在那里，静候我们的造访。
There are other books I would like to recallHuckleberry Finn, for instance, which was one of the very first I read. I have reread it ever so many times since, and also Roughing It (the first days in California), Life on the Mississippi, and so on. Had I to analyze Huckleberry Finn, I would say that, in order to create a great book, perhaps only one central and very simple fact is needed: there should be something pleasing to the imagination in the very framework of the book. In the case of Huckleberry Finn, we feel that the idea of the black man, of the boy, of the raft, of the Mississippi, of the long nights-that these ideas are somehow agreeable to the imagination, are accepted by the imagination. 我还想提及其他书籍——比如《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》，这是我最早读过的书之一。后来我反复重读此书，还有《苦行记》（描写加利福尼亚的早期岁月）、《密西西比河上的生活》等等。若要分析《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》，我认为创作伟大作品或许只需一个核心而简单的要素：在作品的基本架构中，必须蕴含某种能取悦想象力的特质。就这部小说而言，我们感受到黑人、男孩、木筏、密西西比河、漫漫长夜这些意象天然契合想象力的需求，被想象力欣然接纳。
I would also like to say something about Don Quixote. It was one of the first books I ever read through. I remember the very engravings. One knows so little about oneself that, when I read Don Quixote, I 我还想谈谈《堂吉诃德》。这是我完整读完的第一批书籍之一。至今仍记得那些版画插图。人对自己的了解实在太少，当我读《堂吉诃德》时，
thought I read it because of the pleasure I found in the archaic style and in the adventures of the knight and the squire. Now I think that my pleasure lay else-where-that it came from the character of the knight. I am not sure now that I believe in the adventures, or in the conversations between the knight and the squire; but I know that I believe in the knight’s character, and I suppose that the adventures were invented by Cervantes in order to show us the character of the hero. 我曾以为，我读它是为了享受那种古雅的文风，以及骑士与侍从的冒险故事。但现在我意识到，我的乐趣其实另有来处——它源于骑士的品格。如今我已不确定自己是否还相信那些冒险，或是骑士与侍从之间的对话；但我确信自己相信骑士的品格，我想塞万提斯编造那些冒险，正是为了向我们展现主人公的品格。
The same might be said of another book that one may call a minor classic. The same might be said of Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. I am not sure I believe in the hound of the Baskervilles. I am sure I do not believe in being terrified by a dog painted over with luminous paint. But I am sure that I believe in Mr. Sherlock Holmes and in the strange friendship between him and Dr. Watson. 同样的话也可以用来形容另一本堪称小经典的书。同样的话也适用于夏洛克·福尔摩斯先生和华生医生。我不敢确定自己是否相信巴斯克维尔的猎犬，但我确信自己不会被涂满荧光颜料的狗吓到。不过我可以肯定，我相信夏洛克·福尔摩斯先生，也相信他与华生医生之间奇妙的友谊。
Of course, one never knows what the future might bring. I suppose the future will bring all things in the long run, and so we may imagine a moment when Don Quixote and Sancho, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson will still exist, though all their adventures may have been blotted out. Yet men, in other languages, may still go on inventing stories to fit those charac- 当然，谁也无法预知未来会带来什么。我想长远来看，未来终将带来一切，因此我们或许可以想象这样一个时刻——堂吉诃德与桑丘、福尔摩斯与华生医生仍将存在，尽管他们所有的冒险故事可能都已湮灭。但人们仍会用其他语言继续创作，为这些角色编织新的故事。
ters-stories that should be as mirrors to the characters. This, for all I know, may happen. 这些故事应当如同映照人物的一面面镜子。就我所知，这种情况确实可能发生。
Now I will jump over the years and go to Geneva. I was then a very unhappy young man. I suppose young men are fond of unhappiness; they do their best to be unhappy, and they generally achieve it. Then I discovered an author who doubtless was a very happy man. It must have been in 1916 that I came to Walt Whitman, and then I felt ashamed of my unhappiness. I felt ashamed, for I had tried to be still more unhappy by reading Dostoevsky. Now that I have reread Walt Whitman, and also biographies of him, I suppose that perhaps when Walt Whitman read his Leaves of Grass he may have said to himself: “Oh! if only I were Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son!” ^(3){ }^{3} Because doubtless he was a very different kind of man. Doubtless he evolved “Walt Whitman” from himself-a kind of fantastic projection. 现在我要跳过几年时光，来到日内瓦。那时的我是个郁郁寡欢的年轻人。我想年轻人总爱自寻烦恼；他们费尽心思让自己不快乐，而且往往能如愿以偿。就在那时，我遇到了一位想必活得极为快活的作家。那该是 1916 年，我初读沃尔特·惠特曼，顿时为自己的忧郁感到羞愧。这种羞愧尤其强烈，因为我此前还通过阅读陀思妥耶夫斯基来加深自己的痛苦。如今重读惠特曼的作品及其传记后，我猜想当年他读着自己的《草叶集》时，或许曾自言自语："啊！但愿我就是沃尔特· Whitman，一个曼哈顿孕育的宇宙之子！" ^(3){ }^{3} 因为他本人想必与这个形象相去甚远。他无疑是从自身中孕育出了"沃尔特·惠特曼"这个奇妙的投射形象。
At the same time, I also discovered a very different writer. I also discovered-and I was also overwhelmed by-Thomas Carlyle. I read Sartor Resartus, and I can recall many of its pages; I know them by heart. Carlyle sent me to the study of German. I remember I bought Heine’s Lyrisches Intermezzo and a German-English dictionary. After a while, I found I 与此同时，我还发现了另一位风格迥异的作家。托马斯·卡莱尔同样令我震撼不已。我读过他的《旧衣新裁》，至今仍能忆起其中许多篇章；它们已深深刻在我心里。正是卡莱尔引领我学习德语。记得当时我买了海涅的《抒情插曲》和一本德英词典。经过一段时日后，我发觉自己...
could dispense with the dictionary and could go on reading about his nightingales, his moons, his pine trees, his love, and so on. 可以抛开词典，继续阅读他笔下的夜莺、明月、松树、爱情等等。
But what I really wanted and did not find at the time was the idea of Germanism. The idea, I suppose, was evolved not by the Germanic people themselves but by a Roman gentleman, Tacitus. I was led by Carlyle to think that I could find it in German literature. I found many other things; I am very grateful to Carlyle for having sent me to Schopenhauer, to Hölderlin, to Lessing, and so on. But the idea I had-the idea of men not at all intellectual but given over to loyalty, to bravery, to a manly submission to fate-this I did not find, for example, in the Nibelungenlied. All of that seemed too romantic for me. I was to find it years and years afterwards in the Norse sagas and in the study of Old English poetry. 但我当时真正渴望却未能寻获的，是日耳曼精神的理念。这个理念，我想并非由日耳曼民族自身孕育，而是出自罗马学者塔西佗之手。卡莱尔引导我以为能在德国文学中找到它。我确实发现了许多其他珍宝；我深深感激卡莱尔让我结识了叔本华、荷尔德林、莱辛等人。但我心中那个形象——那些不尚智识却恪守忠诚、英勇无畏、以阳刚之气臣服于命运的人们——却未能在《尼伯龙根之歌》等作品中觅得。那些都显得过于浪漫。直到多年以后，我才在挪威传奇和古英语诗歌研究中真正与之相遇。
There I found at last what I had been looking for when I was a young man. In Old English I discovered a harsh language, but a language whose harshness made for a certain kind of beauty and also for very deep feeling (even if, perhaps, not very deep thinking). In poetry, feeling is enough, I suppose. If the feeling comes through to you, it should be sufficient. I was led to the study of Old English by my inclination 在那里，我终于找到了年轻时一直追寻的东西。在古英语中，我发现了一种粗粝的语言，但这种粗粝恰恰造就了某种独特的美感，也承载着极为深沉的情感（尽管或许算不上深邃的思想）。在诗歌里，我想情感就已足够。只要情感能传递给你，那便足矣。正是对隐喻的偏爱，引领我走上了研习古英语的道路
to the metaphor. I had read in Lugones that the metaphor was the essential element of literature, and I accepted that dictum. Lugones wrote that all words were originally metaphors. This is true, but it is also true that in order to understand most words, you have to forget about the fact of their being metaphors. For example, if I say, “Style should be plain,” then I don’t think we should remember that “style” (stylus) meant “pen,” and that “plain” means “flat,” because in that case we would never understand it. 。我曾读卢贡内斯的著作，他说隐喻是文学的根本要素，我接受了这一论断。卢贡内斯写道，所有词语最初都是隐喻。这话不假，但同样真实的是：若要理解大多数词语，你必须忘记它们曾是隐喻这一事实。比如我说"文风应当平实"，我们就不该总记着"文风"（stylus）原指"钢笔"，"平实"本义是"平坦"——若拘泥于此，我们将永远无法真正理解语言。
Allow me to go back again to my boyhood days and remember other authors who struck me. I wonder if it has been often remarked that Poe and Oscar Wilde are really writers for boys. At least, the stories of Poe impressed me when I was a boy, yet now I can hardly reread them without feeling rather uncomfortable over the style of the author. In fact, I can quite understand what Emerson meant when he called Edgar Allan Poe the “jingle” man. I suppose that this fact of being a writer for boys might be applied to many other writers. In some cases, such a description is unjust-in the case of Stevenson, for example, or of Kipling; for although they write for boys, they also write for men. But there are other writers whom one must read when one is young, because if one comes to 请允许我再次回溯童年时光，忆起那些曾震撼我的作家。不知是否有人常提起——爱伦·坡与王尔德本质上是写给少年人的作家。至少坡的小说在我幼时留下深刻印记，而今重读时却总因作者的文风感到不适。我完全理解爱默生称爱伦·坡为"叮当诗人"的深意。想来这种"少年向作家"的特质可套用于诸多作者：某些情况下这种评价有失公允——譬如史蒂文森或吉卜林，他们虽为少年写作，却同样征服成年读者；但另一些作家必须趁年轻时品读，因为当年岁渐长、鬓发斑白、阅历满盈时再来接触，
them when one is old and gray and full of days, then the reading of those writers can hardly be pleasant. It may be blasphemy to say that in order to enjoy Baudelaire and Poe we should be young. Afterwards it is difficult. One has to put up with so many things; one has to think of history, and so on. 阅读这些作家的作品便难称愉悦。或许这是种亵渎——但若要真正领略波德莱尔与爱伦·坡，我们理当保持年轻。迟暮之年再读就困难了：你得忍受诸多瑕疵，还得考量历史背景等等因素。
As to the metaphor, I should add that I now see that metaphor is a far more complicated thing than I thought. It is not merely a comparing of one thing to another-saying, “the moon is like . . .,” and so on. No-it may be done in a more subtle way. Think of Robert Frost. You of course remember the lines: 关于隐喻，我还想补充一点：我现在意识到隐喻远比我想象的复杂得多。它不仅仅是将一物比作另一物——比如"月亮像......"之类的表述。不，它可以以更精妙的方式呈现。想想罗伯特·弗罗斯特的诗句：
For I have promises to keep 因我还有许多承诺要履行
And miles to go before I sleep 入睡前还需赶许多里路
And miles to go before I sleep. 入睡前还需赶许多里路。
If we take the last two lines, the first-“And miles to go before I sleep”-is a statement: the poet is thinking of miles and of sleep. But when he repeats it, “And miles to go before I sleep,” the line becomes a metaphor; for “miles,” stands for “days,” for “years,” for a long stretch of time, while “sleep” presumably stands for “death.” Perhaps I am doing no good for us by pointing this out. Perhaps the pleasure lies not 若我们细读最后两行，首句"安眠前仍有数里路要行"是平实的陈述：诗人正思量着路途与安眠。但当诗句重复"安眠前仍有数里路要行"时，便化作隐喻；"数里"暗指"岁月"，"经年"，喻示漫长光阴，而"安眠"想必隐喻"死亡"。或许我这般拆解并无裨益。或许诗趣并不在于
A POET'S CREED 诗人的信条
in our translating “miles” into “years” and “sleep” into “death,” but rather in feeling the implication. 将"数里"转译为"经年"或将"安眠"对应为"死亡"，而在于感受其中的弦外之音。
The same thing might be said of that other very fine poem of his, “Acquainted with the Night.” In the beginning, “I have been one acquainted with the night” may mean literally what he is telling us. But the line comes again at the end: 他另一首佳作《夜谙》亦复如是。开篇"我早与黑夜相熟"或许仅是字面之意。但结尾重现此句时：
O luminary clock against the sky, Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. 高悬天际的明灯时钟，宣告此刻非对亦非错。我早已与黑夜相熟相知。
Then we are made to think of the night as an image of evil—of sexual evil, I suppose. 于是我们被迫将黑夜视为邪恶的象征——我想，是性之恶的象征。
I spoke a moment ago about Don Quixote, and about Sherlock Holmes; I said that I could believe in the characters but not in their adventures, and hardly in the words that the authors put in their mouths. Now we wonder whether we could find a book where the exact contrary occurred. Could we find a book in whose characters we disbelieved but where we might believe the story? Here I remember another book that struck me: I remember Melville’s Moby-Dick. I am not sure if I believe in Captain Ahab, I am not sure that I believe in his feud with the white whale; I can hardly tell the characters apart. Yet I believe in the 方才我谈及堂吉诃德与福尔摩斯；我说我能相信这些角色，却无法信服他们的冒险，更难以相信作者赋予他们的台词。此刻我们不禁思索：能否找到一本恰恰相反的书？能否找到这样一部作品——我们对其角色心存疑虑，却对其故事深信不疑？这让我想起另一部震撼我的著作：梅尔维尔的《白鲸记》。我不敢确信自己相信亚哈船长，也不敢确信他与白鲸的世仇；我甚至难以区分那些角色。然而我深信......
A POET'S CREED
story-that is, I believe in it as in a kind of parable (though I don’t exactly know what it’s a parable of-perhaps a parable of the struggle against evil, of the wrong way of fighting evil). I wonder if there are any books of which this might be said. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, I think I believe both in the allegory and in the characters. This should be looked into. 我相信这个故事如同相信一则寓言（尽管我不完全清楚它寓示着什么——或许是对抗邪恶的寓言，或许是错误对抗邪恶方式的寓言）。我好奇是否存在任何可作此说的书籍。在《天路历程》中，我想我既相信其寓言性也相信其中的人物。这一点值得深入探讨。
Remember that the Gnostics said the only way to be rid of a sin is to commit it, because afterwards you repent it. In regard to literature, they were essentially right. If I have attained the happiness of writing four or five tolerable pages, after writing fifteen intolerable volumes, I have come to that feat not only through many years but also through the method of trial and error. I think I have committed not all the possible mistakes-because mistakes are innumerable-but many of them. 诺斯替教徒曾言：摆脱罪孽的唯一方式就是去犯下它，因为之后你会为此忏悔。就文学而言，他们本质上是对的。如果说我在写出十五卷不堪卒读的作品后，终于写成了四五页差强人意的文字，那么我达成这一成就不仅耗费了经年累月，更是通过不断试错的方法。我想我犯过的错误虽未穷尽所有可能——因为错误本无止境——但确已犯下许多。
For example, I began, as most young men do, by thinking that free verse is easier than the regular forms of verse. Today I am quite sure that free verse is far more difficult than the regular and classic forms. The proof-if proof be needed-is that literature begins with verse. I suppose the explanation would be that once a pattern is evolved - a pattern of rhymes, of assonances, of alliterations, of long and short syllables, 例如，我和大多数年轻人一样，起初认为自由诗比格律诗更容易写。如今我确信，自由诗远比传统格律形式更难驾驭。若有需要证明——文学确实始于诗歌。我想原因在于，一旦某种模式确立——无论是押韵、谐音、头韵，还是长短音节的组合模式——
and so on-you only have to repeat the pattern. While, if you attempt prose (and prose, of course, comes long after verse), then you need, as Stevenson pointed out, a more subtle pattern. Because the ear is led to expect something, and then it does not get what it expects. Something else is given to it; and that something else should be, in a sense, a failure and also a satisfaction. So that unless you take the precaution of being Walt Whitman or Carl Sandburg, then free verse is more difficult. At least I have found, now when I am near my journey’s end, that the classic forms of verse are easier. Another facility, another easiness, may lie in the fact that once you have written a certain line, once you have resigned yourself to a certain line, then you have committed yourself to a certain rhyme. And since rhymes are not infinite, your work is made easier for you. 诸如此类——你只需重复这一模式即可。而若尝试散文（散文当然晚于诗歌出现），正如史蒂文森所言，则需要更精妙的模式。因为听觉会引导人期待某些内容，而后却未能如愿。取而代之的是其他东西；从某种意义上说，这替代之物应当既是一种缺憾，也是一种满足。因此，除非你像沃尔特·惠特曼或卡尔·桑德堡那样早有准备，否则自由诗反而更难驾驭。至少在我行将抵达生命终点时发现，古典诗体更为得心应手。另一重便利在于：当你写下某行诗句，当你臣服于某行诗句时，便已注定要使用某个韵脚。既然韵脚并非无穷无尽，创作自然就变得轻松了。
Of course, what is important is what is behind the verse. I began by trying-as all young men do-to disguise myself. At first, I was so mistaken that at the time I read Carlyle and Whitman, I thought that Carlyle’s way of writing prose was the only possible one, and that Whitman’s way of writing verse was the only possible one. I made no attempt whatever to reconcile the very strange fact that two opposite men had attained the perfection of prose and of verse. 当然，重要的是诗句背后的东西。起初，我像所有年轻人一样试图伪装自己。我曾犯过严重的错误——当我阅读卡莱尔和惠特曼时，竟认为卡莱尔的散文写法是唯一可行的方式，惠特曼的诗歌创作也是唯一可能的形式。我完全没想过要去调和这个奇特的现象：两个截然不同的人，竟分别达到了散文与诗歌的至高境界。
When I began writing, I always said to myself that my ideas were very shallow-that if a reader saw through them, he would despise me. And so I disguised myself. In the beginning, I tried to be a seventeenth-century Spanish writer with a certain knowledge of Latin. My knowledge of Latin was quite slight. I do not think of myself now as a seventeenthcentury Spanish writer, and my attempts to be Sir Thomas Browne in Spanish failed utterly. Or perhaps they evolved quite a dozen fine-sounding lines. Of course, I was out for purple patches. Now I think that purple patches are a mistake. I think they are a mistake because they are a sign of vanity, and the reader thinks of them as being signs of vanity. If the reader thinks that you have moral defect, there is no reason whatever why he should admire you or put up with you. 当我开始写作时，总对自己说我的思想很肤浅——若读者看穿这些想法，定会轻视我。于是我伪装自己。起初，我试图成为一位通晓拉丁文的十七世纪西班牙作家。其实我的拉丁文造诣相当浅薄。如今我不再自视为十七世纪的西班牙作家，而当年用西班牙语模仿托马斯·布朗爵士的尝试也彻底失败了。或许这些尝试倒孕育出十几行音韵铿锵的句子。当然，那时我刻意追求华丽辞藻。现在我认为华丽文风是个错误。之所以是错误，因为它们暴露了虚荣，读者也会将其视为虚荣的标志。若读者认为你有道德缺陷，便毫无理由欣赏你或容忍你。
Then I fell into a very common mistake: I did my best to be-of all things-modern. There is a character in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjabre who says: “Well, you may say of me what you like, but nobody will deny that I am a contemporary.” I see no difference between that quite absurd character in Goethe’s novel and the wish to be modern. Because we are modern; we don’t have to strive to be modern. It is not a case of subject matter or of style. 于是我犯了一个非常普遍的错误：我竭尽全力想要——无论如何——显得现代。歌德《威廉·迈斯特的学习时代》中有个角色说："好吧，你们可以随意评价我，但没人能否认我是当代人。"我看不出歌德小说中这个相当荒谬的角色与追求现代性之间有什么区别。因为我们本就身处现代；无需刻意追求现代。这与题材或风格无关。
If you look into Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe or (to take a very different example) into Flaubert’s Salammbô, you may tell the date when those books were written. Though Flaubert spoke of Salammbô as a “roman cartaginois,” any reader worth his salt will know after reading the first page that the book was not written in Carthage, but was written by a very intelligent Frenchman of the nineteenth century. As for Ivanhoe, we are not taken in by the castles and the knights and the Saxon swineherds and so on. All the time, we know that we are reading an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century author. 如果你阅读沃尔特·司各特爵士的《艾凡赫》或（举个截然不同的例子）福楼拜的《萨朗波》，你都能辨认出这些作品的创作年代。尽管福楼拜称《萨朗波》为"迦太基小说"，但任何有鉴赏力的读者翻开第一页就会知道，这本书并非写于迦太基时代，而是出自 19 世纪一位极其睿智的法国作家之手。至于《艾凡赫》，我们不会被那些城堡、骑士、撒克逊猪倌等元素所蒙蔽。自始至终，我们都清楚自己读的是 18 或 19 世纪作家的作品。
Besides, we are modern by the very simple fact that we live in the present. Nobody has yet discovered the art of living in the past, and not even the futurists have discovered the secret of living in the future. We are modern whether we want to be or not. Perhaps the very fact of my attacking modernity now is a way of being modern. 此外，我们之所以现代，仅仅是因为我们生活在当下。至今无人发现生活在过去的艺术，甚至未来主义者也未能掌握生活在未来的秘诀。无论情愿与否，我们已然是现代人。或许此刻我对现代性的抨击本身，正是一种现代性的体现。
When I began writing stories, I did my best to trick them out. I labored over the style, and sometimes those stories were hidden under the many overlayings. For example, I thought of a quite good plot; then I wrote the story “El inmortal.” 4 The idea behind that story-and the idea might come as a surprise to 当我开始创作故事时，我竭力将它们装扮得花枝招展。我苦心雕琢文风，有时这些故事会被层层修饰所掩盖。例如我曾构思出一个相当精妙的情节，于是写下了《不朽者》这个故事。其背后的深意——这个想法或许会让
any of you who have read the story-is that if a man were immortal, then in the long run (and the run would be long, of course), he would have said all things, done all things, written all things. I took as my example Homer; I thought of him (if indeed he existed) as having written his Iliad. Then Homer would go on living, and he would change as the generations of men have changed. Eventually, of course, he would forget his Greek, and in due time he would forget that he had been Homer. A moment may come when we will think of Pope’s translation of Homer as being not only a fine work of art (indeed it is), but as being true to the original. This idea of Homer forgetting that he was Homer is hidden under the many structures I wove around the book. In fact, when I reread that story a couple of years ago, I found it a weariness of the flesh, and I had to go back to my old plan to see that the story would have been quite good had I been content to write it down simply and not permit so many purple patches and so many strange adjectives and metaphors. 诸位若读过那个故事——其核心在于，倘若一个人获得永生，那么长此以往（当然这"以往"会极其漫长），他终将说尽万语，行遍万事，写尽万文。我以荷马为例：我想象他（倘若确有其人）创作了《伊利亚特》之后继续存活，随着人类世代的变迁而改变。最终他必然会遗忘希腊语，继而彻底忘却自己曾是荷马。或许某天我们会认为蒲柏翻译的荷马史诗不仅是艺术杰作（确实如此），更忠实于原著。这个关于荷马遗忘自我的概念，潜藏在我为那本书构筑的层层结构之下。事实上，当我两年前重读那个故事时，只觉冗长乏味，不得不翻出原始构思才意识到：若当初能平实书写，不堆砌那么多华丽辞藻与奇崛的形容词隐喻，本可以成为相当出色的作品。
I think I have come not to a certain wisdom but perhaps to a certain sense. I think of myself as a writer. What does being a writer mean to me? It means simply being true to my imagination. When I 我认为自己并非获得了某种智慧，而是或许获得了某种感悟。我视自己为一名写作者。写作对我意味着什么？它仅仅意味着忠实于我的想象。当我
write something, I think of it not as being factually true (mere fact is a web of circumstances and accidents), but as being true to something deeper. When I write a story, I write it because somehow I believe in it-not as one believes in mere history, but rather as one believes in a dream or in an idea. 当我写作时，我认为重要的不是事实层面的真实（纯粹的事实不过是环境与偶然交织的罗网），而是对某种更深层真实的忠诚。当我创作故事时，我之所以书写它，是因为在某种程度上我相信它——不是像相信历史事实那样，而是如同相信一个梦境或理念那般。
I think perhaps we may be led astray by one of the studies I value most: the study of the history of literature. I wonder (and I hope this is not blasphemy) if we are not too aware of history. Being aware of the history of literature-or of any other art, for that mat-ter-is really a form of unbelieving, a form of skepticism. If I say to myself, for example, that Wordsworth and Verlaine were very good nineteenth-century poets, then I may fall into the danger of thinking that time has somehow destroyed them, that they are not as good now as they were. I think the ancient idea-that we might allow perfection to art without taking into account the dates-was a braver one. 我想我们或许被我最珍视的学问之一误导了：文学史研究。我不禁怀疑（但愿这不是亵渎）我们是否对历史过分敏感。关注文学史——或其他任何艺术的历史——本质上是一种怀疑主义的表现形式。比如当我告诉自己，华兹华斯与魏尔伦是杰出的十九世纪诗人时，就可能陷入一种危险认知：认为时间已经消解了他们的价值，他们不再如当年那般卓越。我认为古代那种观念——允许艺术臻于完美而不必考虑年代——才是更为勇敢的见解。
I have read several histories of Indian philosophy. The authors (Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Americans, and so on) always wonder at the fact that in India people have no historical sense-that they treat all thinkers as if they were contemporary. They translate the words of ancient philosophy into the modern 我曾读过几本关于印度哲学史的著作。那些作者（英国人、德国人、法国人、美国人等等）总是对印度人缺乏历史感这一事实感到惊讶——印度人对待所有思想家都仿佛他们是同时代人。他们将古代哲学的话语翻译成现代语言
jargon of today’s philosophy. But this stands for something brave. This stands for the idea that one believes in philosophy or that one believes in poetry-that things beautiful once can go on being beautiful still. 当今哲学的术语。但这代表着某种勇敢的信念。这代表着人们依然相信哲学，相信诗歌——那些曾经美好的事物能够永远美好如初。
Though I suppose I am being quite unhistorical when I say this (since of course the meanings and connotations of words are changing), still I think there are lines—for example, when Virgil wrote “Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram” 5 (I wonder if I am scanning this as I should —my Latin is very rusty), or when an old English poet wrote “Norpan sniwde . . .,” ^(6){ }^{6} or when we read “Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? / Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy” ^(7){ }^{7}-where somehow we are beyond time. I think that there is an eternity in beauty; and this, of course, is what Keats had in mind when he wrote “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” ^(8){ }^{8} We accept this verse, but we accept it as a kind of right, as a kind of formula. Sometimes I am courageous and hopeful enough to think that it may be true-that though all men write in time, are involved in circumstances and accidents and failures of time, somehow things of eternal beauty may be achieved. 尽管我这么说可能很不符合历史事实（毕竟词语的含义和内涵总在变化），但我认为有些诗句——比如维吉尔写下"Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram"时（不知我是否正确地划分了音步，我的拉丁文已十分生疏），或是古英语诗人写下"Norpan sniwde..."时，又或是读到"音乐啊，你为何悲伤地聆听音乐？/甜蜜不与甜蜜相争，欢乐因欢乐而喜悦"时——我们仿佛超越了时间。我相信美具有永恒性；这当然也是济慈写下"美的事物是永恒的喜悦"时的本意。我们接受这句诗，但只是将其视为某种理所当然的真理，某种公式化的表达。有时我足够勇敢且充满希望，愿意相信这可能是真的——尽管所有创作都受制于时代，纠缠于时势、偶然与时代的局限，但永恒之美仍可能被创造出来。
When I write, I try to be loyal to the dream and not to the circumstances. Of course, in my stories (people 当我写作时，我努力忠于梦境而非现实。当然，在我的故事里（人们
tell me I should speak about them) there are true circumstances, but somehow I have felt that those circumstances should always be told with a certain amount of untruth. There is no satisfaction in telling a story as it actually happened. We have to change things, even if we think them insignificant; if we don’t, we should think of ourselves not as artists but perhaps as mere journalists or historians. Though I suppose all true historians have known that they can be quite as imaginative as novelists. For example, when we read Gibbon, the pleasure we get from him is quite akin to the pleasure we get from reading a great novelist. After all, he knew very little about his characters. I suppose he had to imagine the circumstances. He must have thought of himself as having created, in a sense, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. And he did it so wonderfully that I do not care to accept any other explanation. （告诉我该谈谈它们）确实存在真实的情况，但我总觉得这些情况总该带着些许不实之词来讲述。原原本本复述一个故事毫无乐趣可言。我们必须改变某些东西，哪怕我们认为它们微不足道；若不如此，我们就不该自视为艺术家，或许只能算是记者或历史学家。不过我想所有真正的历史学家都明白，他们完全可以像小说家那样发挥想象力。比如我们阅读吉本时获得的愉悦，与阅读伟大小说家作品时的快感极为相似。毕竟，他对笔下人物的了解少之又少。我想他不得不虚构那些情境。在某种意义上，他必定认为自己创造了罗马帝国的衰亡史。而他完成得如此精彩，以至于我不愿接受任何其他解释。
Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this: I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do-when one has found one’s natural voice, one’s 若要我给作家们提建议（虽然我认为他们并不需要，因为每个人都得自行领悟），我会简单地告诉他们：请尽量少改动自己的作品。我不认为修修补补能带来什么益处。当一个人发现自己能做什么——当他找到自己天然的声音，找到自己的
rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful. 节奏时，那一刻便到来了。到那时，我认为细微的修改并不会有多大用处。
When I write, I do not think of the reader (because the reader is an imaginary character), and I do not think of myself (perhaps II am an imaginary character also), but I think of what I am trying to convey and I do my best not to spoil it. When I was young, I believed in expression. I had read Croce, and the reading of Croce did me no good. I wanted to express everything. I thought, for example, that if I needed a sunset I should find the exact word for a sunset-or rather, the most surprising metaphor. Now I have come to the conclusion (and this conclusion may sound sad) that I no longer believe in expression: I believe only in allusion. After all, what are words? Words are symbols for shared memories. If I use a word, then you should have some experience of what the word stands for. If not, the word means nothing to you. I think we can only allude, we can only try to make the reader imagine. The reader, if he is quick enough, can be satisfied with our merely hinting at something. 当我写作时，我不考虑读者（因为读者是个虚构角色），也不考虑自己（或许我自己也是个虚构角色），我只专注于想要传达的内容，并尽力不破坏它。年轻时，我信奉表达。我读过克罗齐，读他的书对我毫无裨益。那时我想表达一切。比如若需要描写落日，我就认为必须找到最贴切的词语——或者说最惊人的隐喻。如今我得出了结论（这个结论或许令人伤感）：我不再相信表达，只相信暗示。说到底，词语是什么？词语是共同记忆的符号。当我使用某个词时，你应当对这个词所指代的事物有所体验。否则，这个词对你毫无意义。我想我们只能暗示，只能尝试让读者去想象。只要读者足够敏锐，仅凭我们的只言片语便能心领神会。
This makes for efficiency-and in my own case it also makes for laziness. I have been asked why I have never attempted a novel. Laziness, of course, is the first explanation. But there is another one. I have 这造就了效率——就我个人而言，也造就了懒惰。有人问我为何从未尝试写长篇小说。懒惰当然是首要原因。但还有另一个缘由：我
never read any novel without feeling a certain weariness. Novels include padding; I think padding may be an essential part of the novel, for all I know. Yet I have read many short stories over and over again. I find that in a short story by, for example, Henry James or Rudyard Kipling you get quite as much complexity, and in a more pleasurable way, as you may get out of a long novel. 每次阅读长篇小说时总会感到某种倦怠。小说总免不了赘笔；就我所知，赘笔或许正是长篇小说的本质属性。然而我反复读过许多短篇小说。我发现例如亨利·詹姆斯或吉卜林的短篇作品，其复杂程度丝毫不逊于长篇，且阅读体验更为愉悦。
I think that this is what my creed comes to. When I promised “a poet’s creed,” I thought, very credulously, that once I had given five lectures I would, in the process, have evolved a creed of some kind. But I think I owe it to you to say that I have no particular creed, except those few precautions and misgivings I have been talking to you about. 我想这就是我的信条所在。当初承诺要讲"诗人的信条"时，我曾天真地以为通过这五场讲座，自己会逐渐形成某种信念体系。但必须坦言，除了与诸位探讨过的那些创作戒律与疑虑外，我并无特定信条。
When I am writing something, I try not to understand it. I do not think intelligence has much to do with the work of a writer. I think that one of the sins of modern literature is that it is too self-conscious. For example, I think of French literature as being one of the great literatures in the world (I don’t suppose anybody could doubt this). Yet I have been made to feel that French authors are generally too self-conscious. A French writer begins by defining himself before he quite knows what he is going to write. He says: 当我写作时，我尽量避免去理解它。我不认为智力与作家的工作有多大关系。我认为现代文学的罪过之一就是太过自觉。例如，我认为法国文学是世界最伟大的文学之一（我想没人会怀疑这点）。但我总觉得法国作家普遍过于自觉。一个法国作家在尚未完全清楚自己要写什么之前，就开始定义自己。他会说：
What should (for example) a Catholic born in such-and-such province, and being a bit of a socialist, write? Or: How should we write after the Second World War? I suppose there are many people all over the world who labor under those illusory problems. 比如，一个出生在某省的天主教徒，又带点社会主义倾向，应该写什么？或者：二战后我们该如何写作？我想全世界有许多人都被这些虚幻的问题所困扰。
When I write (of course, I may not be a fair example, but merely an awful warning), I try to forget all about myself. I forget about my personal circumstances. I do not try, as I tried once, to be a “South American writer.” I merely try to convey what the dream is. And if the dream be a dim one (in my case, it usually is), I do not try to beautify it, or even to understand it. Maybe I have done well, for every time I read an article about me-and somehow there seem to be quite a lot of people doing that sort of thing-I am generally amazed and very grateful for the deep meanings that have been read into those quite haphazard jottings of mine. Of course, I am grateful to them, for I think of writing as being a kind of collaboration. That is to say, the reader does his part of the work; he is enriching the book. And the same thing happens when one is lecturing. 当我写作时（当然，我可能算不上什么好榜样，充其量只是个可怕的反面教材），我试图彻底忘却自我。我抛开个人境遇，不再像从前那样刻意追求成为"南美作家"，仅仅致力于传达那个梦境。倘若梦境朦胧（我的梦境往往如此），我也不会刻意美化或强行解读。或许这样做是对的——每当读到关于我的评论文章（不知为何似乎总有不少人热衷此事），我总会为那些被赋予我随性涂鸦的深刻含义感到惊诧与感激。当然，我感激这些读者，因为我认为写作本质上是种协作。也就是说，读者完成了他们的部分工作，他们正在丰富这本书的内涵。演讲时亦是如此。
You may think now and then that you have heard a good lecture. In that case, I must congratulate you, because, after all, you have been working with me. Had it 或许你偶尔会觉得自己听到了一场精彩的演讲。若是如此，我必须祝贺你，因为归根结底，你始终在与我共同创造。倘若...
A POET'S CREED 诗人的信条
not been for you, I don’t think the lectures would have seemed particularly good, or even tolerable. I hope that you have been collaborating with me tonight. And since this night is different from other nights, I would like to say something about myself. 若非有你们在场，我不认为这些讲座会显得特别精彩，甚至难以忍受。但愿今晚你们一直在与我共同参与。既然今夜不同于寻常夜晚，我想谈谈自己。
I came to America six months ago. In my country I am practically (to repeat the title of a famous book by Wells) the Invisible Man. ^(9){ }^{9} Here, I am somehow visible. Here, people have read me-they have read me so much that they cross-examine me on stories I have forgotten all about. They ask me why So-and-So was silent before he answered, and I wonder who So-and-So was, why he was silent, what he answered. I hesitate to tell them the truth. I say that So-and-So was silent before he answered because generally one is silent before one answers. And yet, all these things have made me happy. I think you are quite mistaken if you admire (I wonder if you do) my writing. But I think of it as a very generous mistake. I think that one should try to believe in things even if they let you down afterwards. 半年前我来到美国。在我的祖国，我几乎（借用威尔斯那本名著的书名）是个"隐形人"。 ^(9){ }^{9} 而在这里，我却莫名地显形了。这里的人们读过我的作品——他们如此熟悉我的文字，甚至对我早已遗忘的故事细节刨根问底。他们追问某某角色为何在回答前保持沉默，而我却困惑于这个某某究竟是谁，为何沉默，又作何回答。我踌躇着不忍道破真相，只得说某某在回答前沉默，只因人们通常总要先沉默再作答。然而所有这些都让我感到幸福。若你们欣赏（不知是否当真如此）我的作品，那实在是美丽的误会。我视这种误会为莫大的慷慨。我想，人应当勇于相信某些事物，即便它们日后会让你失望。
If I am joking now, I do so because I feel something within me. I am joking because I really feel what this means to me. I know that I shall look back on this night. I will wonder: Why did not I say what I should have said? Why did not I say what these months in 此刻我若说笑，是因内心有所触动。我之所以说笑，是因为真切体会到这一切对我的意义。我知道自己会回首这个夜晚，会疑惑：为何当时没说该说的话？为何没道出这数月在美国
America have meant to me-what all these unknown and known friends have meant to me? But I suppose that somehow my feeling is coming through to you. 的时光对我意味着什么——这些相识与未识的朋友们对我意味着什么？但我相信，我的感受终将以某种方式传递给你们。
I have been asked to say some verses of mine; so I will go over a sonnet, the sonnet on Spinoza. The fact that many of you may have no Spanish will make it a finer sonnet. As I have said, meaning is not impor-tant-what is important is a certain music, a certain way of saying things. Maybe, though the music may not be there, you will feel it. Or rather, since I know you are very kind, you will invent it for me. 有人请我朗诵自己的诗作，那我就选一首十四行诗，那首关于斯宾诺莎的。在座诸位或许大多不懂西班牙语，这反而会让诗更显精妙。如我所言，意义并不重要——重要的是某种韵律，某种表达方式。或许即便韵律不显，你们仍能感受。或者说，以诸位的善意，定会为我补全这份韵律。
Now we come to the sonnet, “Spinoza”: 现在请听这首《斯宾诺莎》：
Las traslúcidas manos del judío 犹太人半透明的手
Labran en la penumbra los cristales 在昏暗中雕琢水晶
Y la tarde que muere es miedo y frío. 将逝的暮色是恐惧与寒冷
(Las tardes a las tardes son iguales.) （每个黄昏都如此相同）
Las manos y el espacio de jacinto 茉莉的纤手与空间
Que palidece en el confín del Ghetto 在犹太区边缘渐渐黯淡
Casi no existen para el hombre quieto 对那静立之人几乎不复存在
Que está soñando un claro laberinto. 他正梦见一座澄澈的迷宫
No lo turba la fama, ese reflejo 名声不能将他惊扰，那不过是
De sueños en el sueño de otro espejo 另一面镜中的幻梦之影
Y el temeroso amor de las doncellas. 与少女们怯懦的爱慕
Libre de la metáfora y del mito, 他超脱了隐喻与神话的樊笼
Labra un arduo o cristal: el infinito 雕琢艰难的水晶：那无限
Mapa de Aquél que es todas Sus estrellas. ^(10){ }^{10} 绘制祂的星图，祂即众星之总和。 ^(10){ }^{10}
A POET'S CREED 诗人的信条
NOTES 注释
“OF THIS AND THAT VERSATILE CRAFT” "论此般变化多端的技艺"
INDEX 目录
NOTES 注释
Unless otherwise stated, all translations used in this book are by the editor. 除特别注明外，本书所用译文均出自编者之手。
1. The Riddle of Poetry 1. 诗歌之谜
ı. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 86. ı. 威廉·莎士比亚，十四行诗第 86 首。
2. Borges is no doubt thinking of Plato’s Phaedrus (section 275d), where Socrates says: “I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence” (trans. Benjamin Jowett). According to Socrates, things should be taught and communicated orally; this is “the true way of writing” (278b). To write with pen and ink is to write “in water,” since the words cannot defend themselves. The spoken word-“the living word of knowledge, which has a soul”-is thus superior to the written word, which is nothing more than its image. The words written with pen and ink are as defenseless as those who trust them. 2. 博尔赫斯无疑想到了柏拉图的《斐德罗篇》（275d 节），苏格拉底在此处说道："斐德罗，我不禁觉得文字可悲地如同绘画；画家的作品栩栩如生，但若你向它们提问，它们只会保持庄严的沉默"（本杰明·乔维特译）。苏格拉底认为，知识应当通过口头传授；这才是"真正的书写方式"（278b 节）。用笔墨书写等于"在水中书写"，因为文字无法自我辩护。口语——"那拥有灵魂的活知识"——因而优于文字，后者不过是前者的影像。笔墨写就的文字与信赖它们的人一样毫无防备。
3. Rafael Cansinos-Asséns is the Andalusian writer of whose “magnificent memories” Borges never tired of speaking. While in Madrid in the early 1920s, the young Argentine frequented his literary circle (tertulia). “Meeting him, I seemed to encounter the libraries of the Orient and of the West” (Roberto Alifano, Conversaciones con Borges [Buenos Aires: Debate, 1986], ı01-102). Cansinos-Asséns, who boasted that he could salute the stars in fourteen languages (or seventeen, as Borges says on another occasion)-both classical and modern-did translations from French, Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew. See Jorge Luis Borges and Oswaldo Ferrari, Diálogos (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1992), 37. 3. 拉斐尔·坎西诺斯-阿森斯是那位博尔赫斯总爱提起其"辉煌记忆"的安达卢西亚作家。20 世纪 20 年代初在马德里时，这位年轻的阿根廷人经常参加他的文学沙龙（tertulia）。"遇见他时，我仿佛同时邂逅了东方与西方的图书馆"（罗伯托·阿利法诺，《与博尔赫斯的对话》[布宜诺斯艾利斯：Debate 出版社，1986 年]，101-102 页）。坎西诺斯-阿森斯曾自诩能用十四种语言（博尔赫斯在另一场合说是十七种）——包括古典与现代语言——向星辰致意，他翻译过来自法语、阿拉伯语、拉丁语和希伯来语的著作。详见豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯与奥斯瓦尔多·法拉利合著的《对话录》（巴塞罗那：Seix Barral 出版社，1992 年），第 37 页。
4. Macedonio Fernández (1874-1952) was a proponent of absolute idealism who exerted a steady fascination upon Borges. He was one of the two authors whom Borges compared to Adam for their sense of a beginning (the other was Whitman). This most unconventional Argentine declared, “I write only because writing helps me think.” He produced a large number of poems (collected in Poesías completas, ed. Carmen de Mora [Madrid: Visor, 1991]) and a great deal of prose, including Una novela que comienza (A Novel That Begins), Papelas de recienvenido: Continuación de la nada (Papers of the Recently Arrived: A Continuation of Nothing), Museo de la novela de la eterna: Primera novela buena (Museum of the Novel of the Eternal: The First Good Novel), Manera de una psique sin cuerpo (Manner of a Bodiless Psyche), and Adriana Buenos Aires: Última novela mala (Adriana Buenos Aires: The Last Bad 4. 马塞多尼奥·费尔南德斯（1874-1952）是绝对唯心主义的拥护者，他对博尔赫斯产生了持久的吸引力。作为博尔赫斯笔下具有创世亚当般开端意识的两位作家之一（另一位是惠特曼），这位最离经叛道的阿根廷人宣称："我写作仅仅因为文字能助我思考"。他创作了大量诗歌（收录于卡门·德·莫拉主编的《诗歌全集》[马德里：Visor 出版社，1991 年]）和散文作品，包括《开篇小说》《新来者手札：虚无的延续》《永恒小说博物馆：第一部好小说》《无体之魂的存在方式》以及《布宜诺斯艾利斯的阿德里安娜：最后一部坏
Novel). Borges and Fernández cofounded the literary journal Proa in 1922. 小说》。1922 年，博尔赫斯与费尔南德斯共同创办了文学期刊《船首》。
5. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, scene i, lines 57-90. 5. 莎士比亚，《哈姆雷特》第三幕第一场，第 57-90 行。
6. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “Inclusiveness,” Sonnet 29, in Rossetti, Poems, ist ed. (London: Ellis, 1870), 217. 6. 但丁·加布里埃尔·罗塞蒂，《包容性》，第 29 首十四行诗，收录于罗塞蒂《诗集》初版（伦敦：埃利斯出版社，1870 年），第 217 页。
7. Heraclitus, Fragment 41, in The Fragments of the Work of Heraclitus of Ephesus on Nature, trans. Ingram Bywater (Baltimore: N. Murray, 1889). See also Plato, Cratylus, 402a; and Aristotle, Metaphysics, ioia, n3. 7. 赫拉克利特，《论自然》残篇 41，英格拉姆·拜沃特译（巴尔的摩：N·默里出版社，1889 年）。另见柏拉图《克拉底鲁篇》402a；亚里士多德《形而上学》101a，113。
8. Robert Browning (1812-1889), “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” lines 182-184. 8. 罗伯特·布朗宁（1812-1889），《布劳格拉姆主教的辩白》，第 182-184 行。
9. Borges’ poem “To Rafael Cansinos-Asséns” runs thus: 9. 博尔赫斯诗作《致拉斐尔·坎西诺斯-阿森斯》全文如下：
Long and final passage over the breathtaking height of the trestle’s span. 漫长而终极的穿越，在令人屏息的栈桥高架之巅。
At our feet the wind gropes for sails and the stars throb intensely. 脚下的风摸索着船帆，群星剧烈地悸动。
We relish the taste of the night, transfixed by darkness-night become now, again, a habit of our flesh. 我们品味着夜的滋味，在黑暗中出神——此刻的夜再次成为我们肉身的习惯。
The final night of our talking before the sea-miles part us. 这是海浪将我们分离前，最后一次彻夜长谈。
Still ours is the silence 沉默依然属于我们
where, like meadows, the voices glitter. 如茵草地般闪烁的声音。
Dawn is still a bird lost in the most distant vileness of the world. 黎明仍是迷失在世界最遥远荒芜处的一只鸟。
This last night of all, sheltered from the great wind of absence. 在这最后一夜，我们得以躲避那缺席的狂风。
The inwardness of Good-bye is tragic, 告别蕴含的深意总是悲怆，
like that of every event in which Time is manifest. 如同时间显现的每一件事物
It is bitter to realize that we shall not even have the stars in common. 苦涩的是意识到我们甚至无法共享同一片星空
When evening is quietness in my patio, from your pages morning will rise. 当黄昏在我的庭院里静默时，你的书页间将升起黎明
Your winter will be the shadow of my summer, and your light the glory of my shadow. 你的冬季将是我夏日的投影，而你的光芒将成为我影子的荣光
Still we persist together. 我们依然携手同行
Still our two voices achieve understanding 我们的声音仍能彼此应和
like the intensity and tenderness of sundown. 如同暮色般浓烈而温柔
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald, in Jorge Luis Borges, S_(e)S_{e} lected Poems, 1923-1967, ed. Norman Thomas di Giovanni (New York: Delacorte, 1972), 193, 248. 罗伯特·菲茨杰拉德英译，收录于豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯《诗选 1923-1967》，诺曼·托马斯·迪·乔瓦尼编（纽约：德拉科特出版社，1972 年），第 193、248 页。
ıo. The Seafarer, ed. Ida Gordon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), 37, lines 31b-33a. Borges’ translation “rime bound the fields” avoids the repetition of “earth” present in the original. A literal translation would be: “rime bound the earth.” 10. 《航海者》，艾达·戈登编（曼彻斯特：曼彻斯特大学出版社，1979 年），第 37 页，第 31b-33 行。博尔赫斯译为"白霜封锁了原野"，避免了原文中"大地"的重复。直译应为："白霜封锁了大地。"
ir. This famous quotation (“Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio”) is from Augustine’s Confessions, il.i4. 11. 这句著名引文（"时间究竟是什么？无人问我时，我明白；若要向询问者解释，我却茫然"）出自奥古斯丁《忏悔录》第 11 卷第 14 章。
2. The Metaphor 2. 隐喻篇
ı. Leopoldo Lugones (1874-1938), a major Argentine writer of the early twentieth century, was initially a modernist. His Lunario sentimental (Sentimental Moonery) (Buenos Aires: Moen, 1909) is an eclectic volume of poetry, short stories, and plays that revolve around the theme of the moon; it caused a scandal when it came out, both for breaking with the already established highbrow modernismo and for mocking the audiences of this trend. Lugones is often 1. 莱奥波尔多·卢贡内斯（1874-1938）是二十世纪初阿根廷重要作家，早期属于现代主义流派。其作品《感伤月志》（布宜诺斯艾利斯：莫恩出版社，1909 年）是一部以月亮为主题的诗歌、短篇小说和戏剧合集，问世时因突破既定的高雅现代主义风格并嘲讽该流派的读者群而引发争议。卢贡内斯常...
quoted and commented on in Borges’ works. See, for example, Borges, “Leopoldo Lugones, El imperio jesuítico,” Biblioteca personal, in Obras completas, vol. 4 (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1996), 46I-462, where Lugones is described as “a man of elemental convictions and passions.” 在博尔赫斯的作品中曾被引用并评论过。例如可参见博尔赫斯《个人图书馆》中的《莱奥波尔多·卢贡内斯，耶稣会帝国》一文，收录于《全集》第四卷（布宜诺斯艾利斯：埃梅塞出版社，1996 年），第 461-462 页，其中将卢贡内斯描述为"一个拥有原始信念与激情的人"。
2. Borges is referring to An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, by the Reverend Walter W. Skeat, which was first published in Oxford, England, 1879-1882. 2. 博尔赫斯此处指的是沃尔特·W·斯基特牧师所著的《英语词源词典》，该书最初于 1879-1882 年间在英国牛津出版。
3. What we know today as the Greek Anthology consists of about 4,500 short poems by some 300 authors, representing Greek literature from the seventh century B.C. to the tenth century A.D. These are preserved mainly in two overlapping collections, the Palatine Anthology (which was compiled in the tenth century and takes its name from the Palatine Library in Heidelberg) and the Planudean Anthology (which dates from the fourteenth century and is named for the rhetorician and compiler Maximus Planudes). The Planudean Anthology was first printed in Florence in 1484; the Palatine Anthology was rediscovered in 1606. 3. 现今所称的《希腊诗选》收录了约 300 位作者创作的 4500 首短诗，涵盖了公元前 7 世纪至公元 10 世纪的希腊文学作品。这些诗作主要保存在两个相互重叠的选集中：《帕拉蒂娜诗选》（编撰于 10 世纪，得名于海德堡的帕拉蒂娜图书馆）和《普拉努得斯诗选》（成书于 14 世纪，以修辞学家兼编纂者马克西穆斯·普拉努得斯命名）。《普拉努得斯诗选》于 1484 年在佛罗伦萨首次印刷，《帕拉蒂娜诗选》则于 1606 年被重新发现。
4. G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), “A Second Childhood,” in The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton (London: Cecil Palmer, 1927), 70 (stanza 5). 4. G. K. 切斯特顿（1874-1936），《二次童年》，收录于《G. K. 切斯特顿诗集》（伦敦：塞西尔·帕尔默出版社，1927 年），第 70 页（第 5 节）。
5. Andrew Lang, Alfred Tennyson, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1901), 17. Lang actually says that the line is from Tennyson’s poem “The Mystic,” published in 1830. 5. 安德鲁·朗，《阿尔弗雷德·丁尼生》第二版（爱丁堡：布莱克伍德出版社，1901 年），第 17 页。朗实际上指出这句诗出自丁尼生 1830 年发表的诗歌《神秘者》。
6. Of Time and the River, by Thomas Wolfe, was first published in 1935. 6. 托马斯·沃尔夫所著《时间与河流》于 1935 年首次出版。
7. Heraclitus, Fragment 41, in The Fragments of the 7. 赫拉克利特，《残篇 41》，收录于《赫拉克利特残篇》（
Work of Heraclitus of Ephesus on Nature, trans. Ingram Bywater (Baltimore: N. Murray, 1889). See also Plato, Cratylus, 402a; and Aristorle, Metaphysics, ioroa, n3. 以弗所的赫拉克利特《论自然》英译本，英格拉姆·拜沃特译（巴尔的摩：N·默里出版社，1889 年）。另见柏拉图《克拉底鲁篇》402a 节；亚里士多德《形而上学》ioroa 节，n3 条。
8. Jorge Manrique (1440-1479), “Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique por la muerte de su padre,” stanza 3, lines 25-30. For a reprint, see Manrique, Poesía, ed. Jesús-Manuel Alda Tesán, 13th ed. (Madrid: Cátedra, 1989). 8. 豪尔赫·曼里克（1440-1479）《豪尔赫·曼里克为父亲逝世所作挽歌》第三章第 25-30 行。重印本参见曼里克《诗集》，赫苏斯-曼努埃尔·阿尔达·特桑编，第 13 版（马德里：卡特德拉出版社，1989 年）。
9. Longfellow’s translation runs: 9. 朗费罗译本如下：
Our lives are rivers, gliding free To that unfathomed, boundless sea, The silent grave! Thither all earthly pomp and boast Roll, to be swallowed up and lost In one dark wave. 生命似长河，奔流不复回，
终汇苍茫无垠海，
沉默是坟茔！
人间浮华与虚名，
翻滚沉沦暗波里，
俱化浪中影。
ıo. Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 4, scene 1, lines 156158: “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.” 莎士比亚，《暴风雨》第四幕第一场第 156-158 行：“我们皆由梦幻之材所塑造，短暂的一生终将以长眠收场。”
in. Walther von der Vogelweide was a German medieval poet (c.1170-c.1230), one of the twelve “apostles” of the bards (zwöllf Schirmberrenden Meistersängers). The first three lines of his poem “Die Elegie” (The Elegy) read: 瓦尔特·冯·德·福格威德是德国中世纪诗人（约 1170-约 1230 年），十二位“吟游诗人使徒”之一。其诗作《哀歌》开篇三行为：
Owêr sint verswunden ist mir mîn leben getroumet, daz ich ie wânde ez wære. 往昔皆消逝，此生若大梦，原以为真实。
In Walther von der Vogelweide, Gedichte: Mittelhochdeutscher Text und Übertragung, ed. Peter Wapnewski 引自彼得·瓦普内夫斯基（Peter Wapnewski）编注《瓦尔特·冯·德·福格威德诗集：中古高地德语文本与转译》
(Frankfurt: Fischer, 1982), 108. Borges’ version of the quote is half in Middle High German, half in modern German. （法兰克福：菲舍尔出版社，1982 年），第 108 页。博尔赫斯引用的版本前半部分为中古高地德语，后半部分为现代德语。
12. There is no reference to “iron sleep” among the ninety-one occurrences of “sleep” listed in a concordance to Homer. Borges may be thinking of Virgil’s Aeneid, in John Dryden’s translation: “Dire dreams to thee, and iron sleep, he bears” (Book 5, line 1095); “An iron sleep his stupid eyes oppress’d” (Book 12, line 467). 12. 在荷马史诗九十一处"睡眠"用词的索引中，并未出现"铁眠"这一表述。博尔赫斯可能联想到的是约翰·德莱顿翻译的维吉尔《埃涅阿斯纪》："他将噩梦与铁眠带给你"（第五卷第 1095 行）；"铁眠压着他呆滞的双眼"（第十二卷第 467 行）。
13. Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” stanza 4, lines 13-16. 13. 罗伯特·弗罗斯特《雪夜林畔小驻》第四节第 13-16 行。
14. Among other achievements, León Dujovne translated the Sepher Ietzirah from Hebrew into Spanish. 14. 莱昂·杜霍夫内的重要成就之一是将希伯来语《创造之书》译成西班牙语。
15. See “Beowulf” and the Finnesburg Fragment, translated into modern English by John R. Clark Hall (London: Allen and Unwin, 1958). 15. 参见约翰·R·克拉克·霍尔翻译的现代英语版《贝奥武夫与芬尼斯堡残篇》（伦敦：艾伦与昂温出版社，1958 年）。
16. From Poem 51 of E. E. Cummings’ collection WW (ViVa), published in 1931 (when Cummings was thirtyseven). Borges quotes the first four lines of the third stanza. 16. 出自 E.E.卡明斯 1931 年出版的诗集《 WW 》（《ViVa》）第 51 首（时年卡明斯三十七岁）。博尔赫斯引用了该诗第三节的前四行。
17. Farid al-Din Attar (died ca. 1230) was the author of Mantiq al-tayr, in English The Conference of the Birds, trans. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984). Omar Khayyám (fl. eleventh century) was the author of the Rubáiyát, translated in 1859 by Edward FitzGerald, whose version subsequently went through many editions. Hafiz of Shiraz (died 1389-1390) was the author of Divan, translated from the Persian by Gertrude Lowthian Bell (London: Octagon Press, 1979). 17. 法里德·阿尔丁·阿塔尔（约卒于 1230 年）是《百鸟朝凤》（英译本由阿夫卡姆·达尔班迪与迪克·戴维斯合译，企鹅出版社 1984 年出版）的作者。欧玛尔·海亚姆（活跃于 11 世纪）创作了《鲁拜集》，1859 年由爱德华·菲茨杰拉德译介，其译本后续历经多次修订。设拉子的哈菲兹（卒于 1389-1390 年）著有《迪万》，由格特鲁德·洛锡安·贝尔从波斯语译出（八角出版社 1979 年出版）。
18. Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea (Garden City, N.Y.: 18. 拉迪亚德·吉卜林《从海到海》（纽约州花园城：
Doubleday Page, 1912), 386. The quote is from Dean Burgon’s poem “Petra” (1845), which echoes Samuel Rogers’ “Italy: A Farewell” (1828): “many a temple half as old as Time.” 双日佩奇出版社 1912 年版）第 386 页。引文出自迪安·伯根的诗作《佩特拉》（1845 年），该诗呼应了塞缪尔·罗杰斯《意大利：告别》（1828 年）中的诗句："许多庙宇半如时间古老"。
19. Shakespeare, Sonnet 2. 19. 莎士比亚，十四行诗第二首。
20. A kenning (plural kenningar) is a multi-noun paraphrase used in place of a single noun. Kenningar are common in Old Germanic verse, especially in skaldic poetry, and to a lesser extent in Eddic literature. Borges discussed such phrases in his essay “Las kenningar,” part of La bistoria de la eternidad (The History of Eternity; 1936), and in Literaturas germánicas medievales (Germanic Medieval Literatures; 1951), written with María Esther Vázquez. 20. 复合隐喻（kenningar 为复数形式）是一种用多名词短语替代单名词的修辞手法。这种表达常见于古日耳曼诗歌，尤其是吟唱诗体（skaldic poetry），在埃达文学中也有少量运用。博尔赫斯在《永恒史》（1936）收录的《复合隐喻》一文，以及与玛丽亚·埃斯特·巴斯克斯合著的《中世纪日耳曼文学》（1951）中探讨过此类修辞。
2I. This is the first line of Byron’s eighteen-line poem “She Walks in Beauty, Like the Night,” first published in his collection Hebrew Melodies (1815), a series of songs to be set to adaptations of traditional Jewish tunes by the musician Isaac Nathan. 21. 此乃拜伦十八行诗《她走在美的光彩中，如夜空般》的首句，该诗初版于其诗集《希伯来旋律》（1815）。这部作品是为音乐家以撒·内森改编的传统犹太曲调所创作的系列歌曲。
3. The Telling of the Tale 3. 故事的讲述
ı. William Wordsworth, “With Ships the Sea Was Sprinkled Far and Nigh,” collected in his volume Poems, 1815. 1. 威廉·华兹华斯，《远近海面船只星罗棋布》，收录于其 1815 年诗集《诗集》。
2. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 8. 2. 威廉·莎士比亚，十四行诗第 8 首。
3. Homer, The Iliad: The Story of Achillês, trans. William H. D. Rouse (New York: New American Library, 1964). 3. 荷马，《伊利亚特：阿喀琉斯的故事》，威廉·H·D·劳斯译（纽约：新美国图书馆，1964 年）。
4. See Borges, “Las kenningar,” in La historia de la eternidad (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1936), which deals extensively with Snorri Sturluson (1179-124I), the Ice- 4. 参见博尔赫斯《永恒史》（布宜诺斯艾利斯：埃梅塞出版社，1936 年）中《肯宁格》一文，该文详细论述了冰岛诗人斯诺里·斯蒂德吕松（1179-1241）。
landic master of the Edda. Borges’ poem dedicated to him runs thus: 冰岛的《埃达》大师。博尔赫斯献给他的诗如是写道：
You, who bequeathed a mythology 你，留下神话的人
Of ice and fire to filial recall, Who chronicled the violent glory 冰与火的孝思召唤，是谁记载了暴烈的荣光
Of your defiant Germanic stock, 源自你那桀骜的日耳曼血统，
Discovered in amazement one night 某个夜晚，你惊愕地发现
Of swords that your untrustworthy flesh 自己那不可信赖的肉体
Trembled. On that night without sequel 竟为刀剑而颤抖。在那个无以为继的夜里
You realized you were a coward. . . . 你终于意识到自己是个懦夫……
In the darkness of Iceland the salt 冰岛的黑暗中盐粒翻涌
Wind moves the mounting sea. Your house is 狂风搅动攀升的海浪。你的房屋
Surrounded. You have drunk to the dregs 已被围困。你已饮尽
Unforgettable dishonor. On 那难以洗刷的耻辱。
Your head, your sickly face, falls the sword, 你低垂的头颅，病容憔悴，利剑落下，
As it fell so often in your book. 正如你书中屡次描绘的那般。
Translated by Richard Howard and César Rennert, in Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems, 1923-1967 (bilingual edition), ed. Norman Thomas di Giovanni (New York: Delacorte, 1972), 163. 理查德·霍华德与塞萨尔·伦纳特英译，收录于豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯《诗选 1923-1967》（双语版），诺曼·托马斯·迪乔瓦尼编（纽约：德拉科特出版社，1972 年），第 163 页。
5. See Samuel Butler (1835-1902), The Authoress of the “Odyssey,” Where and When She Wrote, Who She Was, the Use She Made of the “Iliad,” and How the Poem Grew under Her Hands, ed. David Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). 5. 参见塞缪尔·巴特勒（1835-1902）所著《〈奥德赛〉的女作者》，大卫·格林编（芝加哥：芝加哥大学出版社，1967 年），该书探讨了这位女作家的创作地点与时代背景、其身份之谜、对《伊利亚特》的借鉴运用，以及史诗如何在她笔下逐渐成形。
6. Shakespeare, King Henry the Fourth, Part I, Act I, scene i, lines 25-27: “those blessed feet / Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d / For our advantage on the bitter cross.” 6. 莎士比亚，《亨利四世》上篇，第一幕第一场，第 25-27 行："那双神圣的脚/一千四百年前/为我们的福祉钉在苦难的十字架上。"
7. William Langland (1330?-1400?), The Vision of Piers the Plowman, ed. Kate M. Warren (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895). 7. 威廉·朗兰（约 1330-1400？），《农夫皮尔斯的幻象》，凯特·M·沃伦编（伦敦：T·费希尔·昂温出版社，1895 年）。
8. Henry James, The Aspern Papers (London: Martin Secker, 1919). 8. 亨利·詹姆斯，《阿斯彭文件》（伦敦：马丁·塞克出版社，1919 年）。
9. Völsunga Saga: The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs, ed. H. Halliday Sparling, translated from the Icelandic by Eiríkr Magnússon and William Morris (London: W. Scott, 1870). 9. 《沃尔松格萨迦：沃尔松家族与尼伯龙根的故事》，H·哈利迪·斯帕林编，埃里克·马格努松与威廉·莫里斯从古冰岛语译出（伦敦：W·斯科特出版社，1870 年）。
ıo. T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (London: J. Cape, 1935). 10. T. E. 劳伦斯，《智慧七柱：一场胜利》（伦敦：J. 凯普出版社，1935 年）
ir. Henri Barbusse, Le Feu: Journal d’une escouade (Paris: Flammarion, 1915). 11. 亨利·巴比塞，《炮火：一个步兵班的日记》（巴黎：弗拉马里翁出版社，1915 年）
12. G. K. Chesterton, “The Ballad of the White Horse” (1911), in The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton (London: Cecil Palmer, 1927), 225. This is a long poem of some 530 stanzas. Borges quotes from Book 3, stanza 22. 12. G. K. 切斯特顿，《白马叙事诗》（1911 年），收录于《G. K. 切斯特顿诗集》（伦敦：塞西尔·帕尔默出版社，1927 年），第 225 页。这首长诗约 530 节，博尔赫斯引用的是第三卷第 22 节。
4. Word-Music and Translation 4. 文字音乐与翻译
I. That prose translation was published in the Contemporary Review (London), November 1876. 一、该散文译本发表于 1876 年 11 月伦敦《当代评论》。
2. Tennyson, “The Battle of Brunanburh,” in The Complete Poetical Works of Tennyson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898), 485 (stanza 3, lines 6-7). 2. 丁尼生，《布鲁南堡之战》，收录于《丁尼生诗歌全集》（波士顿：霍顿·米夫林出版社，1898 年），第 485 页（第 3 节，第 6-7 行）。
3. This is the first of the eight stanzas of San Juan’s “Noche oscura del alma,” or, as the Golden Age Castilian has it, “Canciones de el alma que se goza de aver llegado al alto estado de la perfectión, que es la unión con Dios, por 3. 这是圣胡安《灵魂的暗夜》八节诗中的首节，或如黄金时代卡斯蒂利亚语所称《灵魂欢欣抵达至高完美境界之歌——即与神合一》。
el camino de la negación espiritual.” E. Allison Peers translates it as: 精神否定的道路。”E·艾利森·皮尔斯将其译为：
Upon a darksome night, 夜色深沉如墨，
Kindling with love in flame of yearning keen 爱火燃起，渴盼炽烈难当
-O moment of delight!- ——啊，欢愉的时光！——
I went by all unseen, 我悄然前行，无人察觉
New-hush’d to rest in the house where I had been. 在这座我曾栖居的房屋里，新近归于寂静安眠。
Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), The Spiritual Canticle and Poems, trans. E. Allison Peers (London: Burns and Oates, 1935), 44I. Willis Barnstone’s translation runs: 圣十字若望（1542-1591），《灵歌与诗选》，E·艾利森·皮尔斯译（伦敦：伯恩斯与奥茨出版社，1935 年），第 44 页。威利斯·巴恩斯通的译本译为：
On a black night, starving for love and dark in flames, Oh lucky turn and flight! unseen I slipped away, my house at last was calm and safe. 漆黑的夜晚，被爱的饥渴与烈焰灼烧，啊幸运的转折与飞遁！我悄然离去，我的居所终得安宁稳妥。
Saint John of the Cross, The Poems of Saint John of the Cross, trans. Willis Barnstone (New York: New Directions, 1972), 39. 圣十字若望，《圣十字若望诗选》，威利斯·巴恩斯通译（纽约：新方向出版社，1972 年），第 39 页。
4. Symons translated it as “The Obscure Night of the Soul.” See William Butler Yeats, ed., The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1936), 77-78. 4. 西蒙斯将其译为《灵魂的晦暗之夜》。参见威廉·巴特勒·叶芝编，《牛津现代诗选 1892-1935》（纽约：牛津大学出版社，1936 年），第 77-78 页。
5. Roy Campbell, Collected Poems (London: Bodley Head, 1949; rpt. 1955), 164-165. Campbell takes the first phrase of the Spanish original as the title of his translation: “En una noche oscura.” 5. 罗伊·坎贝尔，《诗集》（伦敦：博德利·海德出版社，1949 年；1955 年重印），第 164-165 页。坎贝尔采用西班牙语原诗的首句作为译作标题：《在一个晦暗的夜晚》。
6. The phrase “grand translateur” comes from a ballade by Eustache Deschamps, Chaucer’s French contemporary. The refrain is: “et translateur, noble Geoffroy Chaucier.” 6. "伟大译者"这一表述源自乔叟同时代的法国诗人尤斯塔什·德尚的叙事诗。叠句为："高贵的译者杰弗里·乔叟"。
7. This is the first line of Chaucer’s “Parlement of Fowles.” 7. 此句为乔叟《百鸟议会》开篇首行。
8. Tennyson, “The Battle of Brunanburh,” in The Complete Poetical Works, 486 (stanza 13, lines 4-5). 8. 丁尼生《布鲁南堡之战》，收录于《丁尼生全集》第 486 页（第 13 节第 4-5 行）。
9. According to tradition, Hengist and Horsa were brothers who led the Jutish invasion of Britain in the mid-fifth century and founded the kingdom of Kent. 9. 根据传说，亨吉斯特与霍萨是兄弟，他们于五世纪中期率领朱特人入侵不列颠，并建立了肯特王国。
ıo. Francis William Newman (1805-1897) not only was a classical scholar and translator, but wrote extensively on religion, politics, philosophy, economics, morality, and other social issues. His translation of the Iliad was published in 1856 (London: Walton and Maberly). 10. 弗朗西斯·威廉·纽曼（1805-1897）不仅是古典学者和翻译家，还广泛撰写关于宗教、政治、哲学、经济学、道德及其他社会议题的著作。他所译《伊利亚特》于 1856 年在伦敦由沃尔顿与马伯利出版社出版。
ir. Omar Khayyám (ıо48?-ir22), Rubáiyát, trans. Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883), ed. Carl J. Weber (Waterville, Maine: Colby College Press, 1959). FitzGerald’s version was first published in London in 1859. 11. 欧玛尔·海亚姆（1048?-1122），《鲁拜集》，爱德华·菲茨杰拉德（1809-1883）英译，卡尔·J·韦伯编（缅因州沃特维尔：科尔比学院出版社，1959 年）。菲茨杰拉德译本初版于 1859 年在伦敦问世。
12. The line is from Horace, Ars poetica, 359: “Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus” (“I’m aggrieved when sometimes even excellent Homer nods”). 12. 这行诗出自贺拉斯《诗艺》第 359 句："Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus"（"当卓越的荷马也偶有疏漏时，我深感愤慨"）。
13. George Chapman’s translation of the Iliad was published in 1614; his Odyssey, in 1614-1615. Thomas Urquhart (or Urchard) published his translation of the five volumes of Rabelais between 1653 and 1694. Alexander Pope’s translation of the Odyssey appeared in 1725-1726. 13. 乔治·查普曼翻译的《伊利亚特》于 1614 年出版；其《奥德赛》译本问世于 1614-1615 年间。托马斯·厄克特（或称厄查德）在 1653 至 1694 年间陆续出版了拉伯雷五卷作品的译本。亚历山大·蒲柏翻译的《奥德赛》则于 1725-1726 年间面世。
5. Thought and Poetry 5. 思想与诗艺
I. “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” Walter Pater, “The School of Giorgione,” in Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873). I. "一切艺术都持续不断地向音乐的境界升华。"——沃尔特·佩特，《文艺复兴史研究》中《乔尔乔内画派》一文（1873 年）。
2. Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904), Austrian music critic, was the author of Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, first published in 1854. In English: The Beautiful in Music, trans. Gustav Cohen (London: Novello, 1891). 2. 爱德华·汉斯立克（1825-1904），奥地利音乐评论家，1854 年首版《论音乐的美》作者。英译本《音乐中的美》，古斯塔夫·科恩译（伦敦：诺韦洛出版社，1891 年）。
3. See Stevenson’s essay “On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature” (section 2, “The Web”), in Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Travel and in the Art of Writing (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923), 253-277, esp. 256 and 259: “The motive and end of any art whatever is to make a pattern. . . . The web, then, or the pattern: a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.” 3. 参见史蒂文森《论文学风格的若干技术要素》（第二节"织网"），载罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森《旅行与写作艺术随笔集》（纽约：斯克里布纳之子出版社，1923 年），253-277 页，尤见 256 与 259 页："一切艺术的动机与目的都在于构建模式......所谓织网，或称模式：既是感官的又是逻辑的网，一种优雅而意蕴丰富的结构：这便是风格，这便是文学艺术的根基。"
4. G. K. Chesterton, G. F. Watts (London: Duckworth, 1904). Borges may be thinking of pp. 91-94, where Chesterton discusses signs, symbols, and the mutability of language. 4. G.K.切斯特顿《G.F.瓦茨》（伦敦：达克沃斯出版社，1904 年）。博尔赫斯可能指该书 91-94 页，切斯特顿在此讨论了符号、象征与语言的流变性。
5. William Butler Yeats, “After Long Silence,” in W. B. Yeats, The Poems, ed. Richard J. Finneran (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 265 (lines 7-8). 5. 威廉·巴特勒·叶芝《长久沉默之后》，载 W.B.叶芝《诗集》，理查德·J·芬纳兰编（纽约：麦克米伦出版社，1983 年），265 页（7-8 行）。
6. George Meredith, Modern Love (1862), Sonnet 4. 6. 乔治·梅瑞狄斯，《现代爱情》（1862 年），第 4 首十四行诗。
7. Shakespeare, Sonnet 107. 7. 莎士比亚，第 107 首十四行诗。
8. William Morris, “Two Red Roses across the Moon,” in Morris, “The Defence of Guenevere” and Other Poems (London: Longmans, Green, 1896), 223-225. This line is the refrain to each of the nine stanzas. 8. 威廉·莫里斯，《月亮下的两朵红玫瑰》，收录于莫里斯《桂妮薇儿的辩护及其他诗作》（伦敦：朗文格林出版社，1896 年），第 223-225 页。此句为全诗九节中每节的叠句。
9. William Morris, “The Tune of Seven Towers,” in “The Defence of Guenevere” and Other Poems, 199-201. Again, Borges quotes the refrain. The poem was written in 1858, and was inspired by Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting The Tune of Seven Towers (1857). 9. 威廉·莫里斯，《七塔之调》，收录于《桂妮薇儿的辩护及其他诗作》，第 199-201 页。博尔赫斯再次引用了该诗的叠句。此诗创作于 1858 年，灵感源自但丁·加布里埃尔·罗塞蒂的画作《七塔之调》（1857 年）。
ıo. The lines could be translated as follows: 一〇. 这几行诗可译为：
Wandering imaginary dove That inflames the last loves, Soul of light, music, and flowers, Wandering imaginary dove. 游荡的幻梦之鸽
点燃最后的爱火
你是光、音乐与花魂
游荡的幻梦之鸽
ii. Meredith, Modern Love, Sonnet 47. 二. 梅瑞狄斯《现代爱情》第 47 首十四行诗
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976; rpt. 1999), 216 (end of Book I). The whole passage runs: “Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of? Night now! Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!” Borges’ attitude toward Joyce’s last novel is ambiguous: “The justification for the whole period lies in the two works by Joyce, . . . of which Finnegans Wake, whose protagonist is the English language, is ineluctably unreadable, and certainly untranslatable into Spanish.” See Roberto Alifano, Conversaciones con Borges (Madrid: Debate, 1986), II5. 詹姆斯·乔伊斯《芬尼根的守灵夜》（哈蒙兹沃斯：企鹅出版社，1976 年；1999 年重印），216 页（第一卷结尾）。整段文字如下："谢姆与肖恩这对活着的儿女究竟是谁所生？夜啊！告诉我，告诉我，榆树！夜夜！讲述树与石的故事。在蜿蜒流转的河水边，在忽左忽右的水波旁。夜！"博尔赫斯对乔伊斯这部最后的小说态度暧昧："整个时期的正当性都体现在乔伊斯的两部作品中……其中《芬尼根的守灵夜》以英语本身为主角，注定无法卒读，更不可能译成西班牙语。"参见罗伯托·阿里法诺《与博尔赫斯对话》（马德里：辩论出版社，1986 年），第 115 页。
These lines from “Report on Experience,” by Edmund Blunden (1896-1974), gain power from the fact that they echo, in inverted form, a passage from the King James 埃德蒙·布伦登（1896-1974）在《经验报告》中的这些诗句之所以有力，是因为它们以倒置形式呼应了詹姆斯王
version of the Bible: “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread” (Psalms 37:25). 版《圣经》中的段落："我从前年幼，现在年老，却未见过义人被弃，也未见过他的后裔讨饭"（《诗篇》37:25）。
“Luck! In the house of breathings lies that word, all fairness. The walls are of rubinen and the glittergates of elfinbone. The roof herof is of massicious jasper and a canopy of Tyrian awning rises and still descends to it.” James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, 249 (Book 2). "幸运！在呼吸之屋中躺着那个词，如此完美。墙壁是红玉髓所筑，精灵骨制成的闪光门扉。屋顶由斑驳碧玉打造，推罗紫的华盖在其上起伏升降。"詹姆斯·乔伊斯，《芬尼根的守灵夜》第 249 页（第二卷）。
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language was published in London in 1755. Walter W. Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary of the English Language was first published in Oxford, England, 1879-1882. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (based on the twelve-volume OED) was first published in Oxford in 1933. 塞缪尔·约翰逊的《英语词典》于 1755 年在伦敦出版。沃尔特·W·斯基特的《英语词源词典》初版于 1879-1882 年间在英国牛津问世。基于十二卷本《牛津英语词典》的《简明牛津英语词典》则于 1933 年首次在牛津出版。
Robert Louis Stevenson, Memories and Portraits (1887), Chapter 4: “I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire, and to Obermann.” 罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森，《回忆与肖像》（1887 年）第四章："我曾如此勤勉地模仿过哈兹里特、兰姆、华兹华斯、托马斯·布朗爵士、笛福、霍桑、蒙田、波德莱尔和奥伯曼。"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Chapter 14: “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” 塞缪尔·泰勒·柯勒律治，《文学传记》第十四章："那种暂时甘愿搁置怀疑的状态，构成了诗意的信仰。"
These are the last four lines of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.” 这是塞缪尔·泰勒·柯勒律治《忽必烈汗》的最后四行诗。
Azorín (1873-1967), La ruta de Don Quijote (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1974). Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936), Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho según Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Renacimiento, 1913). 阿索林（1873-1967），《堂吉诃德之路》（布宜诺斯艾利斯：洛萨达出版社，1974 年）。米格尔·德·乌纳穆诺（1864-1936），《塞万提斯笔下的堂吉诃德与桑丘生平》第二版（马德里：文艺复兴出版社，1913 年）。
“To draw the longbow” means “to tell tall tales,” “to make exaggerated statements.” "拉长弓"意为"吹牛皮"、"夸大其词"。
“A violent green peacock, deliriated/unlillied in gold.” "一只狂躁的绿孔雀，周身未饰百合/却镀满黄金"。
Paradise Regained, Book 4, lines 638-639; in The Complete Works of John Milton, ed. John T. Shawcross (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 572. 《复乐园》第四卷 638-639 行；引自《约翰·弥尔顿全集》，约翰·T·肖克罗斯编（纽约：双日出版社，1990 年），572 页。
From Milton’s sonnet on his blindness, “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” (1673). 出自弥尔顿关于失明的十四行诗《当我思量我的光明如何耗尽》（1673 年）。
6. A Poet's Creed 6. 诗人的信条
I. John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale,” lines 6I-67 (stanza 7). 一、约翰·济慈《夜莺颂》第 61-67 行（第七节）
2. Borges had dealt extensively with this issue in “Los traductores de las 100 n noches” (The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights), included in his 1936 volume LaL a bistoria de la eternidad. The scholar Antoine Galland (1646-1715) published his French translation of the Thousand and One Nights in the years 1704-1717. The British orientalist Edward William Lane (1801-1876) published his English translation in 1838-1840. 2. 博尔赫斯在其 1936 年著作《永恒史》收录的《一千零一夜的译者》一文中深入探讨过这个问题。学者安托万·加朗（1646-1715）于 1704-1717 年间出版了法译本《一千零一夜》。英国东方学家爱德华·威廉·莱恩（1801-1876）的英译本则出版于 1838-1840 年。
3. The phrase is from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass ( 1892 edition), “Song of Myself,” section 24, line I. 3. 此句出自惠特曼《草叶集》（1892 年版）《自我之歌》第 24 章第 1 行。
4. “El inmortal” (The Immortal) was first published in 1949, in Borges’ collection El Aleph. 4. 《永生者》（"El inmortal"）最初发表于 1949 年，收录于博尔赫斯的《阿莱夫》文集中。
5. Virgil, Aeneid, Book 6, line 268. In John Dryden’s translation the line runs: “Obscure they went thro’ dreary shades” (Book 6, line 378). Robert D. Williams renders it 5. 维吉尔《埃涅阿斯纪》第六卷第 268 行。约翰·德莱顿译本中该句为："他们穿过阴郁的幽暗前行"（第六卷第 378 行）。罗伯特·D·威廉姆斯则译为
as: “They walked exploring the unpeopled night” (Book 6, line 355). "他们行走在无人栖居的夜色中探寻"（第六卷第 355 行）。
6. From The Seafarer, ed. Ida Gordon (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1979), 37. See Borges’ discussion in Chapter 1 of this volume. 6. 引自《航海者》，艾达·戈登编（英国曼彻斯特：曼彻斯特大学出版社，1979 年），第 37 页。参见本书第一章中博尔赫斯的讨论。
7. Shakespeare, Sonnet 8. 7. 莎士比亚，《十四行诗》第 8 首。
8. This is the first line of Keats’s “Endymion” (1818). 8. 这是济慈《恩底弥翁》（1818 年）的首行诗句。
9. Borges, in conversation with Willis Barnstone, expressed a desire for anonymity. “If the Bible is peacock feathers, what kind of bird are you?’ I asked. ‘I am,’ Borges answered, 'the bird’s egg, in its Buenos Aires nest, unhatched, gladly unseen by anyone with discrimination, and I emphatically hope it will stay that way!” Willis Barnstone, With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires: A Memoir (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 2. 9. 博尔赫斯在与威利斯·巴恩斯通的对话中表达了匿名的渴望。"如果《圣经》是孔雀羽毛，那么你是哪种鸟？"我问道。博尔赫斯回答："我是——那只鸟的蛋，在布宜诺斯艾利斯的巢中，尚未孵化，庆幸未被任何有鉴赏力的人看见，我热切希望它能一直如此！" 威利斯·巴恩斯通，《与博尔赫斯在布宜诺斯艾利斯的寻常夜晚：回忆录》（厄巴纳：伊利诺伊大学出版社，1993 年），第 2 页。
ıo. “Spinoza” was published in a volume dedicated to Leopoldo Lugones, El otro, el mismo (The Self and the Other) (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1966). The translation runs thus: 10. 《斯宾诺莎》发表于献给莱奥波尔多·卢贡内斯的诗集《另一个，同一个》（布宜诺斯艾利斯：埃梅塞出版社，1966 年）。译文如下：
The Jew’s hands, translucent in the dusk, Polish the lenses time and again. 犹太人双手在暮色中半透明，反复擦拭着镜片。
The dying afternoon is fear, is Cold, and all afternoons are the same. 垂死的午后是恐惧，是寒冷，所有午后都如出一辙。
The hands and the hyacinth-blue air 双手与风信子蓝的空气
That whitens at the ghetto edges 在贫民窟边缘逐渐苍白
Do not quite exist for this silent 不为这寂静而完全存在的人
Man who conjures up a clear labyrinth, 他召唤出清晰的迷宫
Undisturbed by fame-that reflection 不为名声所扰——那不过是
Of dreams in the dream of another Mirror—or by maidens’ timid love. Free of metaphor and myth, he grinds A stubborn crystal: the infinite Map of the One who is all His stars. 他人梦境在镜中的倒影——也不为少女怯懦的爱。他摒弃隐喻与神话，研磨倔强的水晶：那囊括群星的无限地图。
Translated by Richard Howard and César Rennert, in Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems, 1923-1967, ed. Norman Thomas di Giovanni (New York: Delacorte Press, 1972), 193. A second sonnet devoted to the philosopher, “Baruch Spinoza,” was published in La moneda de bierro (The Iron Coin) in 1976, and translated by Willis Barnstone: 理查德·霍华德与塞萨尔·伦纳特合译，收录于豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯《诗选 1923-1967》，诺曼·托马斯·迪·乔万尼编（纽约：德拉科特出版社，1972 年），第 193 页。另一首献给这位哲学家的十四行诗《巴鲁赫·斯宾诺莎》发表于 1976 年的《铁币》诗集，由威利斯·巴恩斯通翻译：
A haze of gold, the Occident lights up The window. Now, the assiduous manuscript Is waiting, weighed down with the infinite. Someone is building God in a dark cup. A man engenders God. He is a Jew With saddened eyes and lemon-colored skin; Time carries him the way a leaf, dropped in A river, is borne off by waters to Its end. No matter. The magician moved Carves out his God with fine geometry; From his disease, from nothing, he’s begun To construct God, using the word. No one Is granted such prodigious love as he: The love that has no hope of being loved. 西方镀上金雾，将窗棂点亮。此刻，勤勉的手稿正承载着无限，静静等待。有人在幽暗的杯盏中构筑上帝。一个孕育神的犹太人，眼眸含悲，肤色如柠檬；时间载他如秋叶坠河，随波漂向尽头。无妨。那位着魔的术士用精妙的几何雕琢他的神祇；从病痛与虚无出发，他正以词语构建上帝。无人被赐予如此惊人的爱：那不求回报的挚爱。
Barnstone, With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires, 5. For the original, see Borges, Obras completas, vol. 3 (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1995), 151. 巴恩斯通《与博尔赫斯在布宜诺斯艾利斯的寻常夜晚》，第 5 页。原文见博尔赫斯《全集》第三卷（布宜诺斯艾利斯：埃梅塞出版社，1995 年），第 151 页。
OF THIS AND THAT 杂谈录
VERSATILE CRAFT 多变的技艺
Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu 卡林-安德烈·米哈伊列斯库
When Borges came to Harvard in the fall of 1967 to deliver the Norton Lectures, he had long been deemed precious capital. In his self-deprecating way, he claimed to be something of an Invisible Man in his own country, yet his North American contemporaries seemed certain (polite enthusiasm apart) that his was one of the names destined to survive through time’s long run. We know that thus far they were not mistaken: Borges has resisted the usual effacement of 1967 年秋，当博尔赫斯来到哈佛大学发表诺顿讲座时，他早已被视为珍贵的文化财富。他以自谦的口吻声称自己在祖国近乎"隐形人"，但与他同时代的北美同行们（除了礼节性的热情外）似乎确信，他的名字注定会经受住时间的漫长考验。至今看来他们并未错判：博尔赫斯成功抵御了
I would like to thank Melitta Adamson, Sherri Clendinning, Richard Green, Christina Johnson, Gloria Koyounian, Thomas Orange, Andrew Szeib, Jane Toswell, and Marek Urban. Without their help, my efforts to get these lectures into book form would have been more painful. I am most indebted to Maria Ascher, senior editor at Harvard University Press, whose professionalism and utter devotion to Borges made this book possible. 我要感谢梅丽塔·亚当森、雪莉·克伦迪宁、理查德·格林、克里斯蒂娜·约翰逊、格洛丽亚·科尤尼安、托马斯·奥兰治、安德鲁·赛布、简·托斯韦尔和马雷克·乌尔班。若没有他们的帮助，我将这些讲座整理成书的过程会更加艰辛。特别要感谢哈佛大学出版社高级编辑玛丽亚·阿舍尔，正是她对博尔赫斯的专业态度与全心投入，才使本书得以问世。
time,* and the charm and power of this forget-ting-dodger’s work are undiminished. For more than thirty years the six lectures never made it into print, the tapes gathering dust in the quiet ever-after of a library vault. When they had gathered enough, they were found. The spectacular precedent of Igor Stravinsky’s Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons, delivered as Norton Lectures in 1939-1940 and published by Harvard University Press in 1970, shows that a long delay in the transition to print need not deprive lectures of their relevance. Borges’ have as much appeal now as they had three decades ago. 时间惯常的湮没之力*，这位善于躲避遗忘的作家，其作品魅力与力量丝毫未减。三十余年来，这六场讲座始终未能付梓，录音带在图书馆档案室永恒的寂静中积满尘埃。当尘埃足够厚重时，它们终被发掘。伊戈尔·斯特拉文斯基的《音乐诗学六讲》——即 1939-1940 年的诺顿讲座，由哈佛大学出版社于 1970 年出版——这一惊人先例表明，漫长的出版延迟并不会削弱讲座的现实意义。博尔赫斯的讲座如今仍与三十年前同样引人入胜。
This Craft of Verse is an introduction to literature, to taste, and to Borges himself. In the context of his complete works, it compares only with Borges, oral (1979), which contains the five lectures-somewhat narrower in scope than these-that he gave May-June 1978 at the University of Belgrano in Buenos Aires. †\dagger 《论诗艺》是一部关于文学、审美趣味以及博尔赫斯本人的入门之作。在他全部作品中，唯有 1979 年出版的《博尔赫斯，口述》可与之比肩——后者收录了 1978 年五至六月间他在布宜诺斯艾利斯贝尔格拉诺大学的五场讲座内容，其主题范围较本书略显狭窄。 †\dagger
These Norton Lectures, which precede Borges, oral by a decade, are a treasury of literary riches that come to us in essayistic, unassuming, often ironic, and always stimulating forms. 这些诺顿讲座比《博尔赫斯，口述》早十年问世，以随笔式的谦逊笔调、时而反讽却始终引人深思的形式，为我们呈现了一座文学宝库。
The first lecture, “The Riddle of Poetry,” delivered on October 24, 1967, deals with the ontological status of poetry and effectively leads us into the volume as a whole. “The Metaphor” (delivered November i6) discusses, on the model of Leopoldo Lugones, the way in which poets through the centuries have used and reused the same metaphorical patterns, which, Borges suggests, can be reduced to twelve “essential affinities,” the rest being merely designed to astonish and therefore ephemeral. In “The Telling of the Tale” (December 6), devoted to epic poetry, Borges comments on the modern world’s neglect of the epic, speculates about the death of the novel, and looks at the way the contemporary human condition is reflected in the ideology of the novel: "We do not really believe in happi- 第一讲《诗之谜》于 1967 年 10 月 24 日开讲，探讨诗歌的本体论地位，为整部文集奠定了基调。第二讲《隐喻》（11 月 16 日）以莱奥波尔多·卢贡内斯为范例，剖析几个世纪以来诗人如何循环运用相同的隐喻模式——博尔赫斯认为这些模式可归结为十二种"本质关联"，其余不过是为制造惊奇效果的短暂设计。第三讲《故事的讲述》（12 月 6 日）聚焦史诗体裁，博尔赫斯既慨叹现代社会对史诗的漠视，又对小说之死进行思辨，并剖析小说意识形态如何映照当代人类处境："我们其实并不相信幸福——
ness, and this is one of the poverties of our time." Here he shows affinities with Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka (the latter of whom he considered a lesser writer than G. B. Shaw or G. K. Chesterton): he advocates the immediacy of storytelling and seems something of an anti-novelist, invoking laziness as the main reason for not having written novels. “Word-Music and Translation” (February 28, 1968) is a virtuoso meditation on the translation of poetry. “Thought and Poetry” (March 20) illustrates his essayistic rather than theoretical take on the status of literature. While holding that magical, musical truth is more potent than reason’s stable fictions, Borges argues that meaning in poetry is a fetish, and that powerful metaphors unsettle hermeneutic frameworks rather than enhancing meaning. Finally, “A Poet’s Creed” (April ıо) is a confessional text, a kind of literary testament that he composed “in the middle of life’s way.” In 1968 Borges was still at the height of his powers and would yet publish first-rate works, such as El informe de Brodie (Dr. Brodie’s Report; 1970)—which contains “La Intrusa” (The Intruder), the story he claimed was his best-and El libro de arena (The Book of Sand; 1975). "这是我们时代的贫瘠之一。"在此，他与瓦尔特·本雅明和弗朗茨·卡夫卡（他认为后者不如萧伯纳或 G.K.切斯特顿）产生了共鸣：他提倡叙事的直接性，似乎有些反小说家的倾向，将懒惰列为不写小说的主要原因。"词乐与翻译"（1968 年 2 月 28 日）是对诗歌翻译的精湛思考。"思想与诗歌"（3 月 20 日）展示了他对文学地位的随笔式而非理论性的看法。博尔赫斯认为，具有魔力、音乐性的真理比理性的稳定虚构更强大，但他也指出诗歌中的意义是一种崇拜物，强大的隐喻会动摇阐释框架而非增强意义。最后，"诗人的信条"（4 月 10 日）是一篇自白式文本，一种他在"人生中途"创作的文学遗嘱。1968 年，博尔赫斯仍处于创作巅峰，还将出版《布罗迪报告》等一流作品。 《布罗迪报告》（1970 年）——其中收录了他自称最出色的短篇《入侵者》——以及《沙之书》（1975 年）。
These Norton Lectures were delivered by a seer who has often been ranked with the other “great blind 这些诺顿讲座出自一位常被与其他"伟大的盲眼先知"相提并论的智者之口
men of the West.” Borges’ unfailing admiration for Homer, his high but complex praise for Joyce, and his thinly disguised doubt of Milton say much about this tradition. His progressive blindness had become nearly total by the 1960s, when he was able to see nothing more than an amorphous field of yellow. He dedicated El oro de los tigres (The Gold of the Tigers; 1972) to this last and most loyal color of his world. Borges’ style of delivery was as singular as it was compelling: while speaking, he would look upward with a gentle and shy expression on his face, seeming to materially touch the world of the texts-their colors, fabric, music. Literature, for him, was a mode of experience. 西方人。"博尔赫斯对荷马始终不渝的敬仰、对乔伊斯崇高而复杂的赞誉，以及他对弥尔顿近乎不加掩饰的质疑，无不彰显着这一传统。至 1960 年代，他渐进性的失明已近乎完全，视野里只剩下一片混沌的黄色。他将诗集《老虎的金黄》（1972 年）献给了这个陪伴他到最后、也最忠实的色彩。博尔赫斯的讲述方式独特而引人入胜：发言时他总是微微仰面，神情温和腼腆，仿佛能切实触碰到文本世界的肌理——它们的色彩、质地与韵律。于他而言，文学即是一种生命体验。
Unlike the brusque and idiosyncratic tone that characterizes most of his Spanish interviews and public lectures, Borges’ manner in This Craft of Verse is that of a versatile and soft-spoken guest of honor. Yet this book, though wonderfully accessible, does not offer easy-to-munch-on teachings; rather, it is full of deeply personal reflections, and is neither naive nor cynical. It preserves the immediacy of its oral de-livery-its flow, humor, and occasional hesitations. (Borges’ syntax has been altered here only as much as is necessary to make the prose grammatical and readable. Also, occasional misquotations on his part have 与他在西班牙语访谈和公开演讲中惯常的直率独特风格不同，博尔赫斯在《诗艺》中展现出的是位博学多才、温文尔雅的主讲嘉宾形象。然而这部作品虽平易近人，却非浅显易懂的教条；书中充满深刻个人化的思考，既不天真也不愤世嫉俗。它保留了口语表达的即时性——流畅的语势、幽默的谈吐以及偶尔的沉吟。（本书仅对博尔赫斯的句法进行了必要调整以符合语法规范，并修正了他偶尔出现的引述误差。）
been corrected.) This spoken-written text addresses its audience with informality and much warmth. （已修正。）这份口语化的书面文本以亲切温暖的语气面向读者。
Borges’ facility with English is charming. He learned the language in his early childhood from his paternal grandmother, who had come to Buenos Aires from Staffordshire. Both his parents knew English well (his father was a professor of psychology and modern languages; his mother, a translator). Borges spoke it fluidly, musically, with delicate consonants, and took particular delight in the “stark and voweled” sound of Old English. 博尔赫斯的英语造诣令人着迷。他幼时便从来自斯塔福德郡的祖母那里习得这门语言。父母皆精通英语（父亲是心理学与现代语言学教授；母亲则是翻译家）。他说起英语来流畅悦耳，辅音精妙，尤其钟爱古英语那种"质朴而元音丰富"的音韵。
One cannot quite take at face value Borges’ claim that he is “groping” his way along, that he is a “timid thinker rather than a daring one,” and that his cultural background is “a series of unfortunate miscellanies.”* Borges was immensely learned, and one of the chief themes of his work-the theme of the world as an infinite library-has clear autobiographical connotations. His memory was extraordinary: he delivered these six lectures without the help of notes, since his poor eyesight made it impossible for him to read. †\dagger 人们很难完全相信博尔赫斯自称是在"摸索前行"、是个"胆怯而非大胆的思想者"、其文化背景是"一系列不幸的大杂烩"*的说法。博尔赫斯学识极为渊博，他作品的核心主题之一——将世界视为无限图书馆的主题——带有明显的自传色彩。他的记忆力惊人：这六场讲座他完全脱稿完成，因为视力衰退使他无法阅读讲稿。 †\dagger
See Chapter 2; also Borges—Bioy: Confesiones, confesiones, in. 参见第二章；另见《博尔赫斯—比奥伊：忏悔录，忏悔录》中相关记载。 †\dagger Borges’ memory was legendary. An American professor of Romanian origin reports that, during a chat with Borges in 1976 at the University of Indiana, the Argentine writer recited to him an †\dagger 博尔赫斯的记忆力堪称传奇。一位罗马尼亚裔的美国教授回忆，1976 年在印第安纳大学与博尔赫斯交谈时，这位阿根廷作家曾为他背诵
Aided by this remarkable mnemonic capacity, Borges enriches his lectures with myriad textual exam-ples-his aesthetics is always rooted in the primary ground of literature. For literary theorists, he does not have much use; for critics, he has just a little; and philosophers interest him only to the extent that their ideas do not forsake the world for pure abstraction. Thus, his remembering of world literature lives the belles lettres as he speaks. 凭借这种非凡的记忆力，博尔赫斯在讲座中旁征博引——他的美学始终植根于文学的本源土壤。他对文学理论家兴趣寥寥；对批评家稍加关注；哲学家唯有当其思想不脱离现实而陷入纯粹抽象时，方能引起他的兴趣。因此，当他开口谈论时，那些被铭记的世界文学经典便鲜活地流淌而出。
In This Craft of Verse, Borges converses with authors and texts he never lost the pleasure of requoting and discussing, sources ranging from Homer, Virgil, Beowulf, the Norse Eddas, the Thousand and One Nights, the Koran, and the Bible, to Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Keats, Heine, Poe, Stevenson, Whitman, Joyce, and of course himself. 在《论诗艺》中，博尔赫斯与他乐此不疲反复引述讨论的作家作品展开对话，这些源泉从荷马、维吉尔、《贝奥武甫》、北欧《埃达》、《一千零一夜》、《古兰经》、《圣经》，到拉伯雷、塞万提斯、莎士比亚、济慈、海涅、爱伦·坡、史蒂文森、惠特曼、乔伊斯，当然还有他自己。
Borges’ greatness is due in part to a wit and polish that characterize not only his works but his life as well. Asked whether he had ever been visited in his dreams by Juan Perón (the Argentine dictator, and 博尔赫斯的伟大之处部分源于其贯穿作品与生活的机锋与优雅。当被问及是否曾在梦中见到胡安·庇隆（阿根廷独裁者，
widower of Evita), Borges retorted: “My dreams have their style-there is no way I will have him in my dreams.”* 埃维塔的遗孀）时，他反唇相讥："我的梦境自有格调——绝无可能让此人入梦。"*
Borges-Bioy: Confesiones, confesiones, 60. Other collections of interviews with Borges include Dos palabras antes de morir yy otras entrevistas, ed. Fernando Mateo (Buenos Aires: LC Editor, 1994); Borges, el memorioso: Conversaciones de Jorge Luis Borges con Antonio Carrizo (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982); Borges: Imágenes, memorias, diálogos, ed. María Esther Vázquez, and ed. (Caracas: Monte Ávila, 1980); and Jorge Luis Borges and Osvaldo Ferrari, Diálogos últimos (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1987). 博尔赫斯-比奥伊：《忏悔录，忏悔录》，第 60 页。其他博尔赫斯访谈集包括《临终前的两句话及其他访谈》，费尔南多·马特奥编（布宜诺斯艾利斯：LC Editor 出版社，1994 年）；《记忆大师博尔赫斯：豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯与安东尼奥·卡里索对话录》（墨西哥城：经济文化基金会，1982 年）；《博尔赫斯：影像、记忆、对话》，玛丽亚·埃斯特·巴斯克斯编，第二版（加拉加斯：蒙特·阿维拉出版社，1980 年）；以及豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯与奥斯瓦尔多·法拉利合著的《最后的对话》（布宜诺斯艾利斯：南美出版社，1987 年）。
INDEX 索引
Alfred, King, 52, 79 阿尔弗雷德国王，第 52、79 页
America, 3, 53 美洲，第 3、53 页
Anglo-Saxon. See Old English 盎格鲁-撒克逊语。参见古英语
Arabian Nights, 36, 46, 51, 67, 82, 98, IOI-IO2, I49 《一千零一夜》，第 36、46、51、67、82、98、101-102、149 页
Ariosto, Ludovico: Orlando Furioso, 51 卢多维科·阿里奥斯托：《疯狂的奥兰多》，第 51 页
Arnold, Matthew, 66-68 马修·阿诺德，第 66-68 页
Augustine, Saint, 19 圣奥古斯丁，19 页
Azorín: La ruta de Don Quijote, 93 阿索林：《堂吉诃德之路》，93 页
Chesterton, G. K., 17, 81, 146; “The Ballad of the White Horse,” 52-54; “A Second Childhood,” 24 切斯特顿，G.K.，17, 81, 146；《白马民谣》，52-54；《第二个童年》，24
China, 2, 21, 33 中国，2, 21, 33
Christianity, 8 基督教，8
Chuan Tzu, 29-30 庄子，29-30
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 92 柯勒律治，塞缪尔·泰勒，92
Conrad, Joseph, 48 康拉德，约瑟夫，48
Crane, Stephen: The Red Badge of Courage, 100 克莱恩，斯蒂芬：《红色英勇勋章》，100
Croce, Benedetto, 2, II7 克罗齐，贝内德托，2，117
Cummings, E. E., 33-34 卡明斯，E. E.，33-34
French language, 11, 40, 118 法语，11，40，118
Frost, Robert: “Acquainted with the Night,” ^(108){ }^{108}; “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” 30-31, 107-108 罗伯特·弗罗斯特：《熟悉黑夜》， ^(108){ }^{108} ；《雪夜林边驻马》，30-31，107-108
Stravinsky, Igor: Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons, I44 斯特拉文斯基，伊戈尔：《音乐诗学六讲》，144 页
Sturluson, Snorri, 45 斯图尔鲁松，斯诺里，45 页
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 69 斯温伯恩，阿尔杰农·查尔斯，69 页
Symons, Arthur, 6I 西蒙斯，亚瑟，61 页
Tacitus, 105 塔西佗，105 页
Tennyson, Alfred, 25, 58-59, 62-64 丁尼生，阿尔弗雷德，25 页，58-59 页，62-64 页
Twain, Mark: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 102; Life on the Mississippi, 102; Roughing It , 102 马克·吐温：《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》，102 页；《密西西比河上的生活》，102 页；《苦行记》，102 页
Unamuno, Miguel de: Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, 93 乌纳穆诺，米格尔·德：《堂吉诃德与桑丘传》，93 页
University of Belgrano, I44 贝尔格拉诺大学，144 页
Urquhart, Thomas, 76 托马斯·厄克特，76 页
Verlaine, Paul, II4 保罗·魏尔伦，114 页
Virgil, 45, 55, 115, 149 维吉尔，45 页、55 页、115 页、149 页
Vogelweide, Walther von der, 28-29, 35 福格尔魏德，瓦尔特·冯·德，28-29, 35
Völsunga Saga, 51 《沃尔松格传说》，51
Watts, G. F., 81 瓦茨，G.F.，81
Wells, H. G.: The Invisible Man, I2O 威尔斯，H.G.：《隐形人》，120
Whistler, James McNeill, 6 詹姆斯·麦克尼尔·惠斯勒，6
Whitehead, Alfred North, 80 阿尔弗雷德·诺斯·怀特海，80
Whitman, Walt, 32, 110, 149; 沃尔特·惠特曼，32, 110, 149;
Leaves of Grass, 104 《草叶集》，104
Wilde, Oscar, 106 王尔德，奥斯卡，106
Wolfe, Thomas: Of Time and the River, 26 沃尔夫，托马斯：《时间与河流》，26
Wordsworth, William, 43, II4 华兹华斯，威廉，43，114
Yeats, William Butler, 61, 82-83, 95; “Leda and the Swan,” 78 叶芝，威廉·巴特勒，61，82-83，95；《丽达与天鹅》，78
THE TELLING OF THE TALE 故事的讲述
THE TELLING OF THE TALE 故事的讲述
THE TELLING OF THE TALE 故事的讲述
THE TELLING OF THE TALE 故事的讲述
THE TELLING OF THE TALE 故事的讲述
THE TELLING OF THE TALE 故事的讲述
THE TELLING OF THE TALE 故事的讲述
THE TELLING OF THE TALE 故事的讲述
THE TELLING OF THE TALE 故事的讲述
THE TELLING OF THE TALE 故事的讲述
THE TELLING OF THE TALE 故事的讲述
With his customary irony, Borges declared that he was not as good at mocking himself as other writers-his great friend Adolfo Bioy Casares among them. “It consoles me to know that I will be dissolved by forgetfulness. Forgetting will make me anonymous, will it not?” Borges-Bioy: Confesiones, confesiones, ed. Rodolfo Braceli (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1997), 51-52. 博尔赫斯以他惯常的讽刺口吻宣称，他并不像其他作家——尤其是他挚友阿道夫·比奥伊·卡萨雷斯那样擅长自嘲。"想到自己终将被遗忘消解，这让我感到宽慰。遗忘会使我匿名，不是吗？" 引自《博尔赫斯-比奥伊：告白集》，罗道夫·布拉塞利编（布宜诺斯艾利斯：南方出版社，1997 年），第 51-52 页。 †\dagger Borges, oral contains the “personal part” of those Belgrano lectures. The topics include (in chronological order) the book, immor- †\dagger 《博尔赫斯，口述》收录了那些贝尔格拉诺讲座中的"个人部分"。主题按时间顺序包括书籍、不朽
tality, Swedenborg, the detective story, and time. Borges, oral was first published by Emecé Editores in Buenos Aires in 1979, and was reprinted in Borges, Obras completas, vol. 4 (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1996), 161-205. Since its publication, it has become a standard reference for Borges scholars and for readers in the Hispanic world. 《论诗艺》探讨了永恒、斯威登堡、侦探小说和时间等主题。博尔赫斯的口述版最初由布宜诺斯艾利斯的埃梅塞出版社于 1979 年出版，后收录于《博尔赫斯全集》第 4 卷（布宜诺斯艾利斯：埃梅塞出版社，1996 年），第 161-205 页。自出版以来，该书已成为博尔赫斯研究者及西班牙语世界读者的标准参考文献。
eight-stanza Romanian poem which he had learned from its author, a young refugee, in Geneva in 1916. Borges did not know Romanian. The power of his memory was also peculiar in that he tended to remember words and works by others, while claiming to have completely forgotten texts that he himself had written. 一首八节体的罗马尼亚诗歌，1916 年他在日内瓦从作者——一位年轻难民那里学来的。博尔赫斯并不懂罗马尼亚语。他记忆力的奇特之处还在于，他总能记住别人的词句和作品，却声称对自己写过的文字全然遗忘。
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